


No place for promises here

by alterocentrist



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: 21st Century, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Western, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-09-29 16:42:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 52,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17207102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alterocentrist/pseuds/alterocentrist
Summary: Running from trouble, Nicole Haught wanders onto a homestead outside the blighted town of Purgatory, where she is taken in by sisters Wynonna and Waverly Earp. Little did they know how much their fates were to be entwined.Inspired by the Netflix seriesGodless.





	1. Chapter 1

At this point, Nicole was no longer aware of her body. She was aware that she was taking herself somewhere. But legs? Arms? They might as well have been chopped off. Her eyes, too. It was night time, and clouds covered the moon, so she couldn’t focus her sight. She hadn’t fallen over once, though, so that must mean she was somewhere reasonably flat, with no obstacles.

And then she spotted it. A lone lamp. Less than half a kilometre away. Nicole patted at her chest for her hydration hose. She placed the valve in her mouth and sucked hard, to no avail. She had been out of water for the last few hours. Nothing changed. She desperately needed to get to that lamp.

After a hundred metres or so, she stumbled. The lamp was on higher ground. Nicole groaned as pain bloomed from her ankle when she put weight on it. Good. She still had feet, after all. Soon enough, she discovered that the lamp was on the front porch of a house, which was surrounded by a fence. Nicole leaned against the fence.

“I’d stay there if I were you,” a voice cut through the darkness. A woman’s voice. Low, tough.

Nicole looked up to see a figure in silhouette. She heard the telltale clicking sound of a firearm being primed. She straightened up and raised both hands in the air. She had run away so far from certain death only to come to this.

“Who are you?” the voice asked.

Nicole tried to open her mouth, but no sounds came out. Her throat was dry.

The figure sounded more exasperated. “Who are you?!”

“I-” Nicole croaked. She inadvertently took a step forward.

“Stay where you are!” the figure screamed, though she was eventually drowned out by the crack of a gunshot.

Nicole felt a searing heat on her calf. She felt like laughing all of a sudden, if it wasn’t for her left leg collapsing underneath her.

“Oh, shit,” the figure said.

That was the last thing Nicole heard before everything went black.

* * *

Nicole woke up screaming in pain. Worryingly, she had no pants on. Where did her pants go? She was laying on the ground. Using the palms of her hands, she felt the ground around her. She was on some old, scratchy carpet. She was pantsless, and a strange, middle-aged woman with an overgrown pixie cut was touching her leg, and whatever she was doing was making Nicole hurt. She tried to yank her leg away from the woman, but she practically sat on Nicole to stop her from making further movements.

Nicole screamed again.

“Can’t you be more gentle, Gus?” It was the voice from the figure from earlier. “I don’t want her to wake Waverly.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have shot her,” the middle-aged woman responded.

“I asked her nicely!”

The middle-aged woman snorted. “Sure, sure,” she said. “You’re lucky it just grazed her. Took a chunk of skin out but that’s about it. Lucky.” She noticed that Nicole was staring at her. “You’re  _ both _ lucky.” She started unfurling gauze from a roll and wrapping it around Nicole’s leg.

“Will I need to get Doc here?” the other woman asked.

“Probably in the morning.” The middle-aged woman looked at Nicole. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

Exhausted, Nicole tried to reply, but she wasn’t sure if sounds came out of her mouth before her eyes closed once more.

* * *

A hand on her shoulder shook her awake. “Here.” She could feel something being pressed to her lips. “Have some soup.”

Nicole opened her eyes. She took in her surroundings. She was on a thin mattress on top of a small bed in a small cabin. A soft wool blanket was placed over the lower half of her body. The middle-aged woman was leaning over her, holding the thermos to her mouth. Nicole tipped her head back and sipped eagerly, letting the warm, salty liquid run down her throat. When the woman pulled the thermos away, Nicole tried to smile at her, although it may have come off as more of a grimace. “Thanks,” she croaked.

“Ah, so you do speak,” the woman said. “My name’s Gus. What’s yours?”

“I’m Nicole.”

“You’re pretty filthy, Nicole. Are you feeling up for a wash?” Gus asked.

Nicole nodded, afraid to refuse. She watched as Gus replaced the cap on the thermos and placed it beside Nicole. 

Gus disappeared outside for a few minutes, and came back with a bucket and a washcloth. The bucket contained water that was slightly steaming and slightly soapy. She put it down beside Nicole. “Hang on.” She walked over to a stool by the door, where there was a small pile of clothes. She picked up the stool and placed this next to the bucket. “Your hands are working, right? You good to wash and dress yourself?”

“Sure,” Nicole said. She didn’t really want to undress in front of this stranger, no matter how kind she had been.

“Water, towel, and some fresh clothes.” Gus gestured to the items in front of Nicole. “I’ll be outside if you need me. Just yell out.”

“Thanks,” Nicole said.

As soon as Gus left the cabin, Nicole straightened up to a better seated position, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. She folded the wool blanket neatly and put it aside where it wouldn’t get wet. Someone had cleaned her legs and feet. However, there was a layer of dirt caked on her arms. No wonder Gus said she was filthy. She took off the t-shirt she was wearing and tossed it aside, and then took off her sports bra, exhaling sharply as the cool air hit her skin. She dipped the washcloth into the water and wiped it all over her body, starting from her face, to her neck, shoulders, torso, and arms. She bent over the bucket and used her cupped hands to wash as much of the dust out of her hair. She wanted a proper shower, but judging from the bloodstains on her bandages, she was probably still at risk for infection.

After she had wiped much of the grime from her body, Nicole picked up the pile of clothes from the stool. They were an odd pair: a threadbare cotton t-shirt that obviously belonged to a man, and a pair of women’s gym shorts. She slipped the t-shirt on easily, but had trouble with the shorts. She sighed. “Uhm, Gus?” she called out.

Gus walked in and immediately approached Nicole. “Are you okay?”

“Just need to get into these shorts. I don’t think I can quite get up yet,” Nicole said.

“Oh, sure.” Gus took the shorts from her.

Using her arms, Nicole lifted hips from the bed as Gus pulled the shorts up her legs. The shorts were a bit tight, and they were definitely too short for Nicole. She sat back. “Thank you for that,” she told Gus.

Gus was picking up her dirty clothes. “I’m gonna throw this in the wash and come back with a jug of water for you,” she said, already halfway out of the cabin. “Why don’t you finish your soup? The doctor is on his way.”

* * *

By the time the doctor arrived, Nicole had finished two thermoses of soup, two bread rolls, and a whole jug of water. She felt better than she had in days.

The doctor was a thin, pale man with a moustache. He was accompanied by a woman with dark brown hair that fell in waves over her back and shoulders. The doctor rubbed his chin as he looked at Nicole. “You seem to have had quite an adventure, sweetheart,” he said.

Normally, Nicole would recoil at anyone, especially a man, calling her ‘sweetheart’, but this doctor, moustache and all, didn’t trigger any adverse gut reactions from her.

The doctor knelt down and looked at Nicole’s bandaged leg. “I’m sorry Wynonna shot you,” he said.

“Who?”

The dark-haired woman beside the doctor cleared her throat. “I’m Wynonna.”

Nicole gave her a once over, before nodding. “Yeah, your voice is familiar.”

“I’m John Henry Holliday,” the doctor introduced himself. “But you can just call me Doc.”

“Hey, Doc. I’m Nicole.”

“You got a last name?” Doc asked.

“Haught.” At this, Nicole didn’t miss Wynonna’s snort of disbelief.

Doc smiled at her. “Nice to meet you, Miss Haught,” He touched Nicole’s leg. “Is it okay if I remove the dressing?” he asked. “I just want to see how Gus fixed you up.”

“Sure.”

Carefully, Doc unwrapped the bandages around Nicole’s leg. The wound was stitched up, with dark red blood caked around it. Doc murmured to himself as his fingers lightly touched around the wound. “Not bad,” he finally said.

“I told you it was just a flesh wound,” Wynonna said.

Doc didn’t reply. He looked up at Nicole. “I’m gonna clean this up and redress it, all right?” He reached for his bag and pulled out creams and a bag of cotton balls. He worked mostly quietly, murmuring intelligibly now and then. Finally, he rewrapped Nicole’s leg in fresh gauze. “You gotta wash and redress that every day,” he told her. “If it doesn’t bleed or get infected in two days, you can start showering. If it does get infected, call me. Otherwise, I’ll be back in a week to see if we can get the stitches out.”

“Okay. Thanks, Doc,” Nicole said.

“My pleasure, Miss Haught,” Doc said. He got up and smoothed down his trousers. He picked up his bag, casually dangling it from two fingers. He turned to Wynonna. “I gotta tell Gus how good a job she’s done with the stitching.”

Wynonna gestured to the door. “Be my guest.”

Doc smiled at Nicole one last time before leaving the cabin.

Wynonna, however, lingered behind.

Nicole thought she must be asking for compensation, for the doctor’s bills. But before she could open her mouth, Wynonna beat her to it.

“Is your last name really Hot?”

“ _ Haught _ .” Nicole patiently spelled out her surname. She had endured a lifetime of this.

“Oh, right.” Wynonna paused for a second, before bursting into laughter. “What are the odds?” she said. “Anyway, I apologise again. For shooting you. I’m known around here as being a bit trigger happy.”

“I gathered that,” Nicole said.

“You’re lucky it was cloudy that night,” Wynonna said. “I was aiming for your crotch.”

* * *

The cabin was better equipped than Nicole first observed. There was a sink in the corner, and an electric kettle. On the other end was a door that led to a small toilet and shower. There was a bed and an armchair, and a low, empty wooden table that might have had a television on it once. There were two windows that let plenty of light in during the day.

Out the windows, there wasn’t much to see. On one side there were trees. Nicole didn’t know enough about trees to identify them on sight. On the other side was just prairie land that went on for ages, until it disappeared into the horizon. It seemed that her hosts lived on a farm of some sort.

By her third day, she heard them. Grunting and squeaking. Clucking. The smell, however, only hit her when Gus opened the door to bring her food.

“What are your animals?” Nicole asked her.

“We’ve got a few. Pigs and chickens. Sometimes we keep ducks and rabbits,” Gus said. “Why do you ask? The smell bothering you?”

“No, just curious, that’s all,” Nicole said. “I hear them sometimes.”

“Oh, yeah, they’re free range,” Gus said.

“You sell ‘em?”

“The eggs and the pigs, yeah.”

Nicole looked down at her tray of food. It was two bread rolls, filled with ham, salad and drizzled with sauce. “The ham come from one of yours?”

“Probably.” Gus winked.

“Cool,” Nicole said.

Gus watched her eat the food. “How are you feeling?”

Somehow Nicole was getting the sense that she was about to be kicked out. “Better,” she said. “I just want to make sure this,” she nodded to her leg, “doesn’t get infected. And then I’ll be on my way.” She hadn’t even asked Gus where her things were yet. They weren’t in the cabin.

“It’s not that,” Gus said, waving her off as if she had just said something silly. “Do you think you can walk on your own? Why don’t you come up to the house for dinner tonight?”

“I can walk on my own,” Nicole said. “You sure you want me there for dinner? I’d hate to impose.”

Gus huffed. “Nicole, I’ve been  _ personally  _ serving you meals for the last two days. It’d be nice to not have to walk out here every couple of hours.” Her tone was chastising, but she was smiling, her eyes sparkling with humour. “Eat at the house. You’d be doing me a favour, honestly. And you’d get to talk to the girls more.”

“The girls?” As far as Nicole knew, it was just Gus and Wynonna living here.

“Wynonna, and her sister Waverly,” Gus said. “You haven’t met?”

“Only Wynonna’s come by,” Nicole said.

Gus considered it for a moment, then nodded understandingly. “Of course she has,” she said. “Anyway, dinner’s served at seven PM sharp. Come in through the back door. Don’t be late now.”

“I don’t have any good clothes. And I haven’t even showered.”

“Trust me, the girls are the last people to make a fuss about that kind of stuff.”

Just before seven PM, Nicole stepped out of the cabin, breathing in the fresh prairie air. She hadn’t been outside in nearly two days. She was dressed in a man’s chambray shirt that Gus had left for her, and a pair of black sweatpants that stopped at the ankle. She wore borrowed flip-flops. The cabin wasn’t even a hundred metres away from the house, but she nearly tripped over a couple of chickens and a rabbit on her way there. It didn’t help that her twisted ankle was still sore.

The back door was closed. Nicole raised a fist and knocked sheepishly.

“Come in!” A new voice, not Gus’s or Wynonna’s.

Nicole pushed the door open and walked into what was a foyer of sorts, with a concrete floor and wooden benches bolted along the walls. She guessed that it was for people coming in from a muddy farm. On the bench was her pack, and underneath it were her boots. She made a move towards them, but the unfamiliar voice spoke again.

“Anybody there?”

Nicole walked past her pack and boots and stepped into the kitchen area. At the sink was a petite woman, about her age but most likely younger, with long brown hair in a braid. The woman wore a sleeveless top and a brown skirt that hugged her figure. “Hi there,” Nicole greeted her.

The woman stopped what she was doing at the sink to turn around and face Nicole. She stared at Nicole for a few seconds, before finally speaking: “Hmm. You’re not what I expected.”

“Excuse me?”

“Wynonna kept insisting that I shouldn’t see you,” the woman said. “Curiosity won out, though.” Her expression turned sheepish. “I might have looked through your pack.”

“What?” Nicole demanded.

“I’m sorry! Wynonna asked me to. I didn’t steal from you, I promise,” she said. “And honestly, I wanted to see what kind of person you were. How you would end up getting lost around here.”

“And your verdict?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet,” the woman said. She cocked her head to the side, her eyes squinting for a second. “Are you one of those crazy people that walk for the hell of it?”

“Something like that,” Nicole said. “Where’s Gus?”

“She’s just washing up,” she said. “Wynonna almost hit the roof, you know, when Gus said she had invited you to dinner. But at least Wynonna listens to her.” The last sentence was spoken in a quieter voice, almost as a grumble.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself,” Nicole said, stepping forward to close the distance between them. “I’m Nicole.” She held her hand out for the woman to shake.

“Waverly,” the woman said. She took Nicole’s hand.

A warmth radiated from the connection their hands made. Nicole released her grip on Waverly. “It’s nice to meet you, Waverly,” she said.

“Likewise.” Waverly turned back to the sink, where she was scrubbing a pot that looked particularly stubborn. She flicked the tap on, and a jet of water ended up soaking the front of her white top. “Oh man! Darn it!” she exclaimed, as she turned the water off. “I just got changed into this.” Waverly had seemed to forget Nicole’s presence as she reached for the hem of her top and began to pull it over her torso.

Nicole was speechless. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen women disrobing in front of her, it was just that it usually didn’t happen in kitchens. All she could do was watch as Waverly struggled out of her top, which turned out to be rather tight.

“Uhm, Nicole,” Waverly squeaked, as she flailed around in the kitchen. “Little help here?”

“Oh, of course.” Nicole approached Waverly carefully, making sure she wasn’t catching her unaware. “Hold your arms straight up.” When Waverly did as she was told, Nicole got her hands on the fabric of the top and started to gently shimmy it up Waverly’s arms. She tried to ignore the hint of exceptionally toned muscles showing through the gap between Waverly’s bra and her high-waisted skirt.

Through the fabric, Waverly giggled. When Nicole managed to get her out of her top, she clutched the offending piece of clothing to her chest. “Thanks,” she said, smiling up at Nicole.

Nicole’s eyes met Waverly’s, and she, too, couldn’t help but smile. “Anytime,” she said, quieter than she meant to. But they were already so close together.

“Waverly, what in the hell?!”

Nicole and Waverly practically jumped to opposite sides of the kitchen.

Gus stood in between them, her hands on her hips. “What are you  _ stripping  _ in the kitchen for, girl?” she demanded. She didn’t wait for a reply before sighing. “Come on, go put some clothes on before Wynonna gets back.”

“Okay,” Waverly said. Shooting a look at Nicole, she rushed upstairs, still holding the top to her chest.

* * *

At dinner, Nicole learned a few things about her unwitting hosts. Wynonna and Waverly Earp spent part of their childhood on this piece of land, but had to move in with Gus and her husband when their daddy passed away. Neither of them mentioned much about their mother, save for the fact that she was Gus’s younger sister. Wynonna spent most of her teenage years in and out of juvie, and ran off to Europe as soon as she turned eighteen and got enough money for a plane ticket. She returned on the day of her twenty-fifth birthday, in time to claim ownership of the land, and to see her little sister Waverly through her university studies in the city. They moved back onto the homestead and lived there since.

Wynonna, Nicole discovered, was the life of the party. She had a sharp sense of humour and a strong stomach for whiskey, which she drank liberally with the food Gus had prepared. Waverly, on the other hand, was quieter, but not for lack of wit. She seemed like the type of person who was content with sitting back and listening first, before saying something. Despite their differences, there was clearly a strong bond between the sisters. Throughout the evening, they were constantly checking in with each other, either through quick glances or spoken questions.

“Enough about us,” Wynonna said. “What about you, Nicole? Tell us about yourself.”

“There’s really not much to say,” Nicole said.

“You wandered onto our homestead, lost and dehydrated. What do you mean there’s not much to say?” Wynonna still sounded good-natured, but Nicole didn’t miss the challenging undertone in her question.

“I  _ did _ get lost,” Nicole said. “I don’t really have a career. I just pick up work where I can. I was working up in a farm in Athabasca, and then the job there ended, so I decided to make my way back to Calgary, try to find something before the winter. But my car broke down in the middle of nowhere, so I just got up and started walking. That’s how I ended up here.”

Wynonna leaned forward. “It’s a straight line down from Athabasca to Calgary on Highway 2. How could you possibly get lost?”

“I took the scenic route. It was the middle of the night. My phone was running low on battery, and there was no service anyway. I was looking to find a busier road, try to hitch a ride to the city,” Nicole explained. She was leaving details out of her story, but she figured that the Earps didn’t need to know these. She shrugged. “I was tired. I just got turned around, I guess.”

Gus had caught on to the tension that had fallen at the dinner table. “Wynonna,” she said. “I think what matters is that Nicole is now safe and well.”

At this, Waverly chuckled. “After Wynonna shot her, at least.”

“Yeah, that was not a great moment,” Nicole said. “Is it really that dangerous ‘round here?”

“Not more so than other places,” Waverly replied. “Wynonna is just extra cautious because we’re three ladies living all alone in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town is Purgatory, like a twenty-minute drive away. The worst thing is we don’t even have internet up here, let alone cell service.”

“Huh. How did you call the doctor in then?”

At this, Waverly smiled. “Wynonna felt so bad about shooting you, she drove the ATV to the edges of the property to call Doc. That’s the only place you can get service on the property.”

Nicole gestured at the food on the table. Gus had roasted a chicken and served it with sweet potatoes and a salad. Everything had come from the farm. “You seem to be pretty self-sufficient,” she said. “How often do you have to go into Purgatory?”

“I go pretty much every day but Monday. I still got work there,” Gus said.

“We used to go once a week to buy supplies that we don’t grow here,” Waverly said. “But now we gotta rely on Gus to pick it up for us while she’s out. Or we get rides with her, if we need something. But that means a whole day away from here, which means we skip a whole day of work on the land. That’s not so ideal.”

“What do you mean? Why can’t you go anymore?”

“My jeep and Wynonna’s truck are both busted. Have been for a couple of months,” Waverly said. “And we can’t get any mechanics up here.”

“No mechanics in Purgatory?”

Wynonna put down her glass of whiskey. “No mechanics that want to help an Earp.”

That statement piqued Nicole’s curiosity. Why wouldn’t people want to help the Earps? Sure, Wynonna was abrasive, but Waverly seemed sweet, and Nicole knew Gus’s kindness firsthand. Nonetheless, this was Nicole’s chance to be useful. “I can have a look at it tomorrow morning, if you like,” she said.

“You’re a mechanic, Nicole?” Wynonna asked.

“I know enough,” Nicole said. She had taken enough jobs to have a working knowledge of the guts of most motor vehicles. “I’ll look at them tomorrow. See if I can fix them. It’s the least I can do to thank you for your hospitality.”

Wynonna groaned good-naturedly. “Come on. You gotta stop being so damn nice,” she said. “You’re making me seriously regret shooting you.”

* * *

Nicole hauled her pack back to the cabin that night. It was one of her proudest purchases, bought secondhand, yet practically brand new, from a woman in Edmonton who had a short-lived backpacking phase. Inside the pack, she carried everything she owned. It was mostly clothing, and a pair of old running shoes that she hardly used. She also had a multitool, a flashlight, and a portable stove. Nicole opened the zipper inside the top lid and was relieved to find that her wallet and her camera were still there. She felt along the hip pocket and found her phone. She dug into the bag for her electronics pouch, pulled her charger out, and plugged her phone into one of the outlets in the cabin.

Nicole returned to the inside of the pack. She felt along the inside until she found what she was looking for. An opaque plastic envelope, and a spiral-bound notebook. Nicole snapped the envelope open and slid her hand inside, feeling around until she found a stiff bit of plastic. Her camera’s memory card. She had no idea if either of the Earp sisters had found these items and looked through what was in them. They didn’t look like they had been touched, though. Plus, Wynonna appeared to be the type who enjoyed a good inquisition, yet she hadn’t said anything. Nicole put them back in her pack, in the same place she found them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and the kudos, everyone. I especially love your comments and I do try to take the time to respond to them. I am having way too much fun writing this story. This week, we have a look into life on the homestead, and the beginnings of Wayhaught through Wynonna's oblivious eyes. But, oh, what of Nicole's secret? Have fun reading...

Wynonna was surprised when she discovered that their nighttime intruder was a woman. Women who got lost out in the wild didn’t often make it far. Someone always found them. Either to help them or to hurt them. There was always someone there. But perhaps Wynonna shouldn’t be so surprised. It had been a long time since unknown men came near the homestead.

It took her, Gus, and a wheelbarrow to get the woman from outside the fence to the cabin behind the house. After sufficient medical care was given, and the woman was placed in the bed in the cabin, Wynonna tried to figure out who she could be. The clothing suggested a life of manual labour. Perhaps this woman was a farmhand somewhere. But her pack, not-so-clean but still clearly expensive, suggested that there was more to this stranger than meets the eye.

The next day, after she saw Doc Holliday off, she had Waverly look through the pack. She would have done it herself, but she wouldn’t have remembered how to repack it, and if the stranger turned out to be harmless, then returning a pack that had obviously been rifled through was just  _ rude _ .

The pack’s capacity was mostly used up by a week’s worth of clothes. There was also a small toiletry bag, filled with basics. A small pouch containing chargers for electronics. A phone and a camera, both flat. The camera’s memory card had been taken out, but Waverly didn’t think it was a good idea to further intrude. Interestingly enough, there was a portable stove, the kind used by backpackers, but no food or sleeping equipment, save for a down quilt rolled up at the bottom of the pack. Wherever the stranger was staying, she had a base where she could get supplies.

Waverly had also found a wallet, which she handed to Wynonna. There was an Alberta driver’s licence in there for a Nicole Rayleigh Haught. At least that confirmed that the stranger was telling the truth. Though it could be a fake ID. Real or not, it said that Nicole was currently twenty-six years old, and also had an endorsement to drive a light truck.

“She looks nice,” Waverly said, peering over Wynonna’s shoulder.

“I don’t want you talking to her just yet,” Wynonna said. “You understand?”

Waverly huffed. “You’re being paranoid again.”

“I’m just being sure.” Wynonna slipped the licence back in the wallet and handed it back to Waverly. “Pack it the way you found it.”

“You got it, boss.” Waverly flourished this by rolling her eyes.

* * *

Just a little over four years ago, Wynonna had been living it up in Greece, short on money but free from the trappings of being an Earp. She never planned on returning to Purgatory. She had no interest in finding out what had happened to the family land. But an email from Waverly, in which she announced her university plans and wrote about her life that summer made Wynonna think that she should come back. Waverly’s words filled her with a strange melancholy. She hadn’t seen her sister in six years. They were practically strangers to each other. They were nothing more than electronic penpals.

Wynonna bought a one-way plane ticket to Calgary and made sure she was back by her twenty-fifth birthday, which was a few days after Waverly’s eighteenth. 

She didn’t expect to be running a reasonably operational farm, but then again, there weren’t many career options for someone who barely had a high school diploma. Really, it was thanks to Gus and her husband Curtis. She had a lot to learn, and she wouldn’t have learned it if they hadn’t been patient enough to teach her. The Earp farm, which laid to waste when her daddy was alive, now made enough for them to live on for most of the year. And that was for the best, because there were still people in Purgatory who snarled at the sight of an Earp. 

Wynonna wanted to see as little of them as possible.

* * *

John Henry Holliday refused to trim his funny moustache, preferred to be addressed as ‘Doc’, and drove around town in an obnoxious pink Cadillac. Wynonna always wondered how someone like him could manage to keep his medical licence. But he was the only physician nearby who would make a house call to the Earps.

“Wynonna, you really got to stop shooting at people just because they look funny,” Doc said, as they were walking to his car.

“Hey, this is only the second time! And that first time, it didn’t even hit him,” Wynonna said, referring to that time she had fired a slug at Champ Hardy’s feet. “Besides, asshole thought he could screw my little sister just because I employed him.”

Doc frowned. “Weren’t they dating  _ before  _ you hired him?”

“Waverly deserves better anyway,” Wynonna said.

“I know.” Doc opened the back seat and placed his bag inside. “So, how long will Miss Haught be staying with you?”

“Probably until you give her the all clear,” Wynonna said.

“I can arrange a room for her in town if you feel that she’s overstaying her welcome,” Doc said.

“Doc, I shot her. I don’t get to tell her if she’s overstaying her welcome,” Wynonna retorted.

At this, Doc chuckled. “Well, if she wants to leave before this week ends, let me know so I can see her before that,” he said. “Or at least let her know that she can stay in town in the meantime.”

“Sure thing,” Wynonna said. “What’s the news in Purgatory?”

“The Gardners are contemplating leaving town,” Doc answered.

Wynonna’s eyes widened. The Gardners were Purgatory’s wealthiest family. Their fortune was built on old money, so they were insulated from most problems in town. “Jesus. Do you know why?”

“No buildings to build, and no one’s around to build them anyway.” Doc shrugged. “Might as well up and leave.”

“It’s gonna be rough on the town when they go,” Wynonna said. “They might as well put everyone else out of business.”

Doc stroked his chin. “Don’t you and Mercedes go back some?”

“Yes.” Wynonna caught the look in Doc’s eye. “I’m not talking to her, Doc.”

“I just wanted to suggest, maybe you two can work something out,” Doc said. “For Purgatory.”

“Fuck Purgatory,” Wynonna spat. “I don’t owe this town shit.”

Doc didn’t flinch at Wynonna’s outburst. “If Purgatory dies, where do we all go, Wynonna?”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Wynonna gestured to the farm. “I’ve got everything I need right here.”

* * *

Wynonna had a brief stint as a farmhand in Greece, and before that, in Sicily. It was hard work. Despite never being a city dweller, years inside concrete walls had made her soft. On the farms, Wynonna was often yelled at, in languages she couldn’t understand. She was often longing for a hot shower and a softer bed. However, she came to enjoy the work, and she took a lot of lessons back home to Purgatory.

The day on the homestead began at five o’clock sharp, no matter how much their handful of roosters insisted that it should be earlier. Wynonna would have a cup of coffee with a generously buttered piece of toast, and then she would wake Waverly up and let her get ready while she got dressed. Once dressed, the first order of business was to let the pigs and the chickens out of their shelters, let them get some walking done while Waverly got their food prepared. After that, they checked on the trees and the vegetable patch and watered them before the sun rose. Waverly collected the eggs, because the hens were always nicer to her. Every other day, they cleaned out the pig pens. These were their morning duties, and they were often done by nine-thirty. They would have some food and rest for a bit before doing some admin. Pigs needed to be picked up for slaughter. The packaged preserves needed to be labelled, eggs sorted by size into the cartons, before the woman from the market bought them wholesale. 

After lunch, during the hottest part of the day, Wynonna and Waverly would spend time with the pigs, watching them, making sure they were staying cool and not wreaking havoc on their vegetable patches. And then it was time for another meal, then the sisters ushered them back into their pens, got the chickens back into their coops, and watered anything green, before heading back into the homestead to wash up and prepare dinner.

It was a monotonous life that involved unpleasant smells and far too much shit of the literal kind, but Wynonna came to be all right with that.

* * *

After cleaning out the pig pens, Wynonna rode the ATV back to the house. She spotted Nicole inspecting under the hood of her truck. Wynonna hopped off the ATV and approached her. Nicole was no longer in her borrowed clothes, but her own ones, with the well-worn, yet well-maintained, brown leather work boots that Wynonna envied as soon as she slipped them off Nicole’s feet a few nights ago.

“Tell me, doc. How bad is it?” Wynonna asked.

Nicole chuckled as she wiped her hands on a rag. “I’m gonna need to go into town for some parts,” she said.

“Shit, that bad, huh?”

“Any other mechanic would tell you to put her in the scrap heap.” Nicole slammed the truck’s hood shut. To Wynonna’s surprise, she ran an affectionate hand over the hood’s blue surface. “But I say fight for her. As soon as I get my hands on the parts, I can fix it and she’ll be up and running in no time.”

Wynonna put a hand on her hip. “Sounds pretty straightforward to me.”

“Pretty pricey too.”

It would be easy to just get another truck. Purgatory had no shortage of them. Ones with more readily available parts, too. But this was Wynonna’s uncle’s truck, and she had coveted it for so long. She wasn’t going to part with it that easily. “I’m waiting on some cash,” she said. “We’ll get the parts then.”

“Good.” Nicole walked over to Waverly’s red jeep, and Wynonna found herself following her. “This one, however, is up and running. Simple fix.”

Waverly popped her head out of the driver’s seat window. “We really need to brush up on our mechanic skills, Wynonna,” she said. “It’s nice that we can feed ourselves, but it’s not so nice to not have a way to get out of here fast. I mean, what if the pigs turn into flesh-eating zombies?”

“Well, we got one vehicle running,” Wynonna said. “We’ll worry about the other one later.” She turned to Nicole. “Thanks, Haught.”

Nicole shrugged. “Just making myself useful.”

“No, seriously,” Waverly chimed in. “This is a  _ big  _ help.”

Wynonna looked at her sister, who was looking at Nicole. She didn’t miss the way Nicole had caught her sister’s attention. Wynonna understood. It was tiring to see the same two people every day. It was tiring to spend most of each day hanging out with pigs, chickens and rabbits. Truth be told, Nicole's arrival had made things a bit more exciting for everyone.

“Waves, why don’t you go into town and grab some beer for us?” Wynonna suggested. “There’s some money on the mantelpiece.”

Waverly looked at Nicole. “Do you want to come?”

“Uh, I think it’s best if I stay here for now.” Nicole’s eyes dropped to the floor. “My leg, and all.”

“Yeah, I think Nicole can stay here and help me prepare lunch,” Wynonna said. Waverly showing up to Purgatory with a brand new stranger would just attract unnecessary attention.

“And by that, she means that you’re going to make sure she’s gonna serve up something edible,” Waverly told Nicole.

“Go get the cash, baby girl,” Wynonna said.

Waverly hopped out of her jeep and walked inside the house.

As soon as the door closed, Wynonna turned back to Nicole. “So, what other skills do you have, Haughtshot?”

If Nicole had feelings about the nickname, she didn’t make it known. She smirked at Wynonna. “That’s probably on a need-to-know basis,” she said.

“Would I ever need to know?” Wynonna asked.

“I hope not,” Nicole said. “I can get pretty expensive.”

* * *

Waverly was on the phone, speaking through gritted teeth. “Oh, that’s all right. Totally understand,” she said. “Yup, sure thing. Nice doing business with ya. Bye!” She all but slammed the phone back into the receiver.

“Waverly? What’s wrong?” Wynonna asked.

“That was that farm to table restaurant in Calgary, telling us that they need to cancel their order for next week,” Waverly replied.

“That’s the whole hog, right?”

Waverly nodded, before raking her fingers through her hair. “Apparently some vegan activists caught wind of the spit roast event and had started sending the restaurant threats.” She exhaled sharply through her nose. “I mean, our meat consumption as a society  _ is  _ out of control, but that's no reason for violence. People have to make a living, you know!”

“We’ll find some other use for that hog,” Wynonna assured her. “Maybe Shorty’s can have a roast night.”

“We were charging fourteen hundred dollars for it, Wynonna,” Waverly said. “Shorty isn’t gonna pay seven hundred for a side of pork.”

“Then we’ll call another restaurant in Calgary,” Wynonna said. “We’ll call farmer’s markets. Whatever. We’ll find someone.” They had been raising this particular hog for fourteen months, hoping for a relatively bigger-ticket client, just like the restaurant that just cancelled their order. No one in Purgatory would be interested in paying the price for pork of that quality.

“Do you think the Gardners would be interested in holding a roast for the whole town?” Waverly asked, partly in jest.

“Beth Gardner huddled over a spit. That’ll be the day.” Wynonna sighed. “I don’t think it’ll happen though. I heard from Doc that they were thinking about leaving Purgatory.”

Waverly didn’t even look surprised. “Well, good for them.”

* * *

After dinner, Wynonna invited Nicole for beers on the porch. Nicole accepted, and so they sat on crates and nursed bottles of beer.

“Heard from anyone in Athabasca? I’m sure people are looking for you.” Earlier that day, Wynonna lent Nicole the ATV so she could go to the property boundary to see if anything would come through on her phone.

Nicole shook her head. “I’ve sent people messages, though,” she said. “I’ll deal with it when I actually get constant service.” She took a swig from her beer bottle. “You’re my age, Wynonna. What are you doing on a farm that doesn’t get internet?”

“I’m older than you for sure. And I don’t need the internet,” Wynonna said. “Besides, what someone like you doing driving up and down the province?”

“What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?”

“You know.” Wynonna gestured vaguely. “Tall, hot, expensive gear.” She nodded towards Nicole’s boots. “You seem better suited to be a city slicker.”

“Been there, done that. Not my thing,” Nicole said. She scuffed the heel of her boot against the porch’s timber floor. “And these were issued to me from a previous job.”

“What  _ is  _ it that you do for a living?” Wynonna asked again, because she still didn’t have a clear idea.

“Anything and everything I can get my hands on,” Nicole said. “I’ve done construction, forestry, admin work…”

Wynonna raised an eyebrow. “They let a girl do all that?”

Nicole scowled. “Where I’ve been, they’re so short on people that they’ll let anyone do anything.”

“Right, so you’re some sort of handywoman extraordinaire,” Wynonna said.

“Yeah, I’ll take that,” Nicole said. She placed her bottle down on the floor beside her feet. “Waverly was quiet during dinner. Everything okay with her?”

At this point, the two of them were talking without looking at each other, instead staring into the nothingness of the prairies beyond. But Wynonna turned to look at Nicole, who was apparently cognisant enough of the mood at the dinner table. “We were gonna sell our prized hog but the deal went through,” she said. “She spent all afternoon trying to find another buyer.”

Nicole picked up her bottle again and took a drink from it, presumably to avoid the heat of Wynonna’s stare. “How big’s the hog?”

“About three-twenty kilos. Maybe a little under,” Wynonna said.

Nicole let out a whistle that reverberated into her beer bottle. “A moneymaker.”

“Hence Waverly’s mood.”

“Got it.” Nicole swirled the beer in her bottle for a few seconds. She chewed the inside of her cheek, and then took a deep breath. “I know people in Banff who might be interested.”

“Dive bar?” Wynonna joked.

Nicole rolled her eyes. “Ski resort,” she said. “Can I borrow the ATV tomorrow? I’ll make some calls.”

“Uh, sure.” Just  _ who  _ was this stranger who wandered onto their homestead?

The next morning, Nicole hopped on the ATV, phone in pocket. Wynonna busied herself with the chickens while waiting for her to return. Nicole took longer than expected. She briefly wondered if Nicole had used the ATV to make a run for it. Not that she could go far with it. And her leg was still hurt.

Twenty minutes later, Nicole eventually returned. She swung her long legs off the ATV and walked up to Wynonna, who was wrist deep in a tin of chicken feed. “I told them to pick it up from the abattoir next Monday,” she said. “Is that a good day?”

It was. The butcher Hardy could fetch the hog from the homestead on Sunday afternoon. On Monday, Wynonna could use Gus’s car to meet them at the abattoir and get the payment. She grinned up at Nicole, who already had a self-satisfied smile on her face. “Haught, you’re a fucking star!”

* * *

Wynonna elected to put away the dishes after lunch. She stood at the sink and watched through the window as Waverly and Nicole were having a conversation. They were a few metres away, so Wynonna couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but Waverly was pointing to the trees while Nicole listened attentively.

Over lunch, she had let Nicole tell Waverly about the hog’s new buyer. Waverly had brightened up considerably and carried the conversation all throughout their meal. Wynonna was pleased. Waverly worked so hard. She deserved to hear some good news, and she also deserved to her good news from someone other than Wynonna or Gus. Although Waverly had a better relationship with the people of Purgatory, she had still grown up hearing all the negative opinions people had of their family. People who didn’t speak ill of the Earps were hard to come by.

Waverly was still smiling as she led Nicole to the trees. She looked like she was pointing out the different kinds of fruit.

Wynonna heard footsteps behind her. “Hey, Gus,” she said. “We got some leftovers.”

“Hey, kid. It’s all right, Shorty fed me before I left,” Gus replied. She approached Wynonna and reached out to ruffle her hair. Wynonna would have deflected Gus’s hand if she hadn’t had both of hers deep in dishwater. “It frosted this morning. Did you see?” Gus asked.

“I did.”

“You still let the pigs out?” 

The pigs were free range during the daytime from mid-May to when the ground started drying up, and the things living in it started freezing or dying. “I’ll wait until it frosts three days in a row,” Wynonna said. “I feel bad shuttering them in for half the year.”

“We literally make bacon out of those pigs, and you still  _ feel  _ bad?” Gus laughed as she poured herself a glass of water. “Besides, they get the nicest fat on them when they’re all cooped up for the winter. Like that hog that we were gonna sell.”

“Oh, we’re still selling that hog.” Wynonna couldn’t resist smiling. “We found a buyer.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, Nicole found a buyer.”

“Nicole?” Gus raised an eyebrow. “As in the young lady that you shot?”

Wynonna frowned. “I thought we were past that.”

“The stitches in her leg say otherwise.” Gus placed her empty glass on the sink, within Wynonna’s reach. “Anyway, how did she find a buyer?”

“She knows people, I guess,” Wynonna said. 

“And I see that she’s becoming friends with our girl.” Gus was now also watching Waverly and Nicole through the window. They were picking apples from the trees, and Waverly was grinning proudly as Nicole bit into one. “We’ve established that she’s not dangerous, right?”

“If Nicole was an axe murderer, it would’ve been so easy for her to kill us already. We’ve gone on and on about how off the grid we were,” Wynonna mused. “She could have just done the deed and then skipped town with Waverly’s jeep.”

“Jesus  _ Christ _ , Wynonna, that’s damn morbid,” Gus admonished. “I was just wondering if she was maybe a petty criminal on the run. You didn’t have to go all Alfred Hitchcock.” She finished with swatting Wynonna’s arm.

“Obviously my imagination is a lot more colourful than yours,” Wynonna retorted. “But Nicole seems harmless.”

“Where did she say she was from? Such a well-mannered girl,” Gus commented.

“I haven’t worked that out yet,” Wynonna said. “Also, maybe she’s playing the long game with us.”

“No more late night crime TV for you.”

“Well, that’s the only kind of TV we’re getting, and that’s the only time I’m free to watch it.”

They laughed, and then wordlessly watched as Waverly accepted an apple handed to her by Nicole. She bit into it, shutting her eyes for a moment as she savoured the taste. Gus breathed out a happy sigh, causing Wynonna to turn to her.

“What’s up?” Wynonna asked.

“I’m just glad we can all talk to someone who doesn’t know anything about the Earp baggage, even if it’s just for a little bit,” Gus answered. “We can just be a normal bunch of homesteading women. Until Doc Holliday gives her a clean bill of health.”

Wynonna smirked. “Are you suggesting we give Nicole an infection?”

“I am  _ not _ ,” Gus said. She swatted Wynonna again, and started to walk out of the kitchen. “I have had enough of your nonsense. I’m going upstairs to take a nap.” She huffed a half-irritated goodbye before Wynonna heard her footsteps fading up the stairs.

“Jeez,” Wynonna murmured. “Wish it was that easy to get rid of most people.”

Suddenly, footsteps came thundering down the stairs. “Wynonna!” Gus called out. “There’s an SUV that just parked outside the gate. Are you expecting anyone?”

Wynonna dried her hands on a tea towel. “An SUV?”

“Yep. Big and shiny,” Gus said. “Looks like government.”

“Local government?”

“Who the hell in Purgatory has a car that new? Not even Bunny Loblaw.”

“I’ll go look.” Wynonna put her boots on and stomped outside, shoelaces still untied. She watched as a burly, dark-skinned man exited the SUV. He wore fitted grey cargo pants, a dark blue shirt, and an olive green bomber jacket. His eyes were obscured by mirrored aviator sunglasses, but Wynonna knew he was already scoping out the place. “How can I help you?” she called out, still metres away.

The man fished in the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a badge. “Sergeant Xavier Dolls, RCMP.” His voice was deep, flat and controlled.

“Ah, a Mountie,” Wynonna said, smirking. “What brings you here, Sergeant?”

“I’m here searching for a witness in an important case,” Sergeant Dolls said. “We found the witness’s car about thirty kilometres northeast of this place, just off the highway. It was empty.”

“That’s a shame.” Wynonna had never done too well with talking to authority figures.

Sergeant Dolls didn’t budge. “Did anyone come through the last couple of days?”

Wynonna could hear Waverly and Nicole laughing in the distance. She stared at her reflection in the sergeant’s sunglasses. “Nope,” she said. “What kind of case is this, Sarge? Should we be looking out for someone?”

“The case is classified, ma’am,” Sergeant Dolls said sternly.

“All right. What does this witness of yours look like?”

The sergeant reached for his phone in his jacket pocket. He tapped on it a few times and turned the screen towards Wynonna, showing a photograph of a redheaded woman. “Her name’s Nicole Haught. She’s about five-nine, athletic build,” he said. He handed Wynonna a business card. “If you see her, call me.”

Wynonna swore she could feel her blood go cold. “Sure thing,” she said.

“Thank you.” Sergeant Dolls moved back towards his car. With a half-wave, half-salute, he got into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and drove off.

Wynonna turned back towards the house, the hairs on the back on her neck standing on end. Nicole Haught had some explaining to do.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I'm going to be away in the sticks next week so I won't have internet, so next chapter's upload will be pushed to the week after. But I did a double upload this week! I wrote a fluffy Wayhaught romcom oneshot called The Festival Circuit. Check it out if you haven't already.
> 
> This week, things are escalating. We see a fight between the sisters, and a comical attempt at a jailbreak... Enjoy.

Waverly had always been the curious one. Wynonna tended to see things in black and white, without any further investigation, but Waverly liked parsing through the shades of grey. Wynonna’s only advantage was that she could be trusted to come to a decision. Waverly had never been good at being certain.

But she was fairly certain that Nicole Haught wasn’t who she said she was. Not in a bad way.

There was always something _different_ about Nicole. She claimed to be a drifter with no permanent address and no steady job. But in their conversations, not to mention in the way Nicole carried herself, Waverly could tell that she wasn’t just typical Albertan blue collar. No matter how much she worked to pass herself off as such. After all, she managed to find people to buy a fourteen hundred dollar hog in record time. How many forklift drivers could personally ring up the chef de cuisine of a five-star ski lodge in Banff?

Nonetheless, Waverly also knew that Nicole was kind and polite to a fault. She had a lowkey charm to her that had Gus eating out of the palm of her hand. Even Wynonna, who was easily spooked, seemed to be warming to her. Hell, Waverly would be the first to claim that she could see through Nicole’s earnest schtick, but she couldn’t deny that she was buying it, too.

After Nicole had told her about the hog’s new buyer, Waverly had been overjoyed and grateful that she pushed aside her afternoon tasks to show Nicole the trees that they had been growing. The apple trees were yielding quite nicely. They picked some for themselves and ate them as an after-lunch snack.

“I’ve been thinking of getting into beekeeping,” Waverly told Nicole.

“What’s stopping you?” Nicole asked.

“I don’t know. It just feels like there’s too much to do on the homestead sometimes, and that it wouldn’t be a good idea to add another thing,” Waverly said. “But we've got the trees for the bees.” She chuckled at her unintentional rhyme.

“Must be hard, just the two of you running this whole place,” Nicole said.

“We get by. It's also nice to not have to rely on other people that much.” Waverly shrugged. “But as I said, there’s not much time to do anything else.”

“What do you like to do in your spare time?” Nicole asked.

“Read, mostly. I’ve always been a big reader. Especially when we were living out in town, near the library,” Waverly said. “And there’s always lots of time to read on the homestead, since we don’t have internet.”

“You went to university, right? Did you study agriculture?”

Waverly laughed. “No, I studied history.”

“Interesting choice,” Nicole remarked.

“Yep, makes me extra employable,” Waverly joked.

At this, Nicole laughed.

The sound of an engine rumbling drew their attention elsewhere. They watched as the black SUV that was driving towards the homestead a few minutes ago was now driving away from it.

“I wonder what that was about,” Waverly said.

“Maybe Wynonna already dealt with it,” Nicole said.

Sure enough, Wynonna came around the side of the house, all but stomping. The laces of her boots were untied. She stopped in her tracks and watched Waverly and Nicole for a moment. When they waved at her, she rolled her eyes and headed inside the house. Whoever she had a conversation with probably did not bring her good news.

* * *

Later that night, Waverly was reading a book in the living room when Wynonna came downstairs, pulling on a jacket and heading in the direction of the back door. “Hey,” Waverly called after her, “where are you going?”

Wynonna didn’t reply. Instead, all Waverly heard was the back door creaking open and then thudding shut again.

“What the heck?” Waverly marked her page, closed her book and rolled off the couch. She grabbed her coat off the coat tree by the door and shrugged into it. She shoved her feet into her boots and went after Wynonna, who was letting herself into the cabin. That was enough to slow Waverly down in her pursuit. Was this a booty call? Waverly was aware of her sister’s libidinous tendencies, she just didn’t know that they also possibly, potentially extended to women. “You know what?” she muttered to herself. “I don’t actually wanna know.” With that, she got back inside the house, kicked her boots off, and called it a night.

She didn’t see Nicole the following morning.

“Is Nicole okay?” she asked Wynonna.

“She will be,” Wynonna said. She offered no explanations about what happened the night before.

“What do you mean?” Waverly asked.

Wynonna shook her head. “I think it’s best if you steer clear of Nicole for a while.”

After their morning duties, Doc Holliday arrived in his pink Cadillac. Waverly watched from the porch was Wynonna walked him down to Nicole’s cabin. Not even fifteen minutes later, they were walking back to Doc’s car, and Nicole was with them. Her pack was on her back. Doc opened his car and Nicole placed the pack on the backseat, before getting into the front passenger seat.

Nicole’s _leaving_? Waverly tossed her book down and ran off the porch, but Wynonna had anticipated her. She had both hands on Waverly’s arms. “Stay here, Waves,” she said.

“She’s leaving.”

“Yes, she is.” For the first time, Waverly noticed that Wynonna’s blue eyes were flashing with anger. “Go back inside, Waverly.”

“What’s going on?” Waverly asked. She looked over Wynonna’s shoulder, to try make eye contact with Nicole. Nicole, however, seemed to be avoiding it. “What’s going on, Wynonna?” she demanded.

Wynonna pushed Waverly back. “I’ll talk to you later,” she growled. “Now get inside the house, goddammit!”

When Wynonna got like this, Waverly knew that she had no choice but to listen to her. Through the living room window, Waverly watched Doc Holliday drive away.

* * *

 

The first thing Wynonna did when she finally got inside the house was wrap Waverly in a tight bear hug.

“Wynonna!” Waverly squeaked, wriggling against her sister’s arms.

Wynonna released Waverly. “Did Nicole say anything to you?”

“What are you talking about?” Waverly asked. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her. And now you sent her away.”

Wynonna raked a hand through her hair. “Baby girl, Nicole isn’t who she says she is.”

“What?” In a sense, Waverly already knew that, but she figured that she was going to let Nicole get there on her own time.

But what Wynonna told her was certainly not what she was expecting. Waverly listened as Wynonna recounted the visit of one Sergeant Dolls, who was looking for his missing witness. Wynonna told her about the photograph on Dolls’s phone. “As soon as I saw that, I knew that she had to go, and I told her as much,” she finished.

“Did this Sergeant Dolls say what they needed Nicole for?” Waverly asked.

“He said it was classified, which is cop bullshit,” Wynonna said. “But the Mounties wouldn’t be driving up to homesteads in Bumblefuck, Alberta, unless it wasn’t serious.”

“Jesus, listen to yourself,” Waverly said. “You never cared much for what the cops say or do.”

“It doesn’t matter much when I’ve got to keep you safe,” Wynonna retorted.

“I can handle myself, Wynonna,” Waverly said. “I bet you didn’t even ask her for the full story.”

“Didn’t need to. If the cops need Nicole as a witness to a crime and she ran, that must mean she has gotten mixed up with some dangerous people. Her car broke down and she fucking walked _thirty_ kilometres in the dark, Waverly!” Wynonna insisted. “People don’t do that unless they’re in _really_ deep shit.”

Waverly sat down on the couch, her hands on her knees, her gaze on the carpet. “She could have told us,” she muttered. “She could have asked us for help.”

“No. I would have thrown her out on her ass anyway,” Wynonna said. “I don’t want that kind of trouble anywhere near us.”

“It’s not like you never brought in any trouble yourself,” Waverly said.

“This is different.”

“Better or worse than an entire town shunning us?” Waverly asked.

Wynonna’s voice turned low. “Don’t go there, Waverly.”

But Waverly persisted. “This is you being selfish again, Wynonna. You don’t want anyone else’s trouble but you don’t mind freely giving yours to other people.” Waverly watched as her older sister seemed to shrink while listening to her words. “Nicole was probably just trying to gauge if she could trust us. And you had to make it so damn difficult, with your guns and your general attitude and everything!”

“You know what?!” Wynonna’s voice was raised now, at a level that Waverly only usually heard when a bar fight was about to go down. “You know what, Waverly? I’m sorry that I sent your little friend away. I know that I’m not exactly the best companion to have during your twenties, but you’re so caught up with your shiny new toy that you’re failing to see that I’m just doing this to protect you.”

“Ah.” Waverly leaned back against the back of the couch. “You’re jealous.”

“I’m not,” Wynonna said.

“At least admit that you’re wrong for sending Nicole away like that,” Waverly said. “I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye to her. Gus didn’t, either.”

“She was always going after Doc cleared her anyway,” Wynonna spat. “She didn’t need to make it a whole thing.”

“Oh, so you _were_ jealous.”

“Waverly.”

Waverly stood up. “You never had much of a clear idea on what was best for me anyway. I mean, you try, but your hit rate was never very accurate,” she said quietly. “Anyway…” She trailed off and sighed heavily as she walked backwards, watching as Wynonna took her place on the couch. And then she turned around and went upstairs. Her mind was buzzing. She needed to get to town. She needed to see Nicole.

* * *

 

Dinner was silent, and though Gus tried to break the stalemate between the sisters, she didn’t push any further. Waverly did the dishes while Wynonna disappeared upstairs. Waverly went to her bedroom straight after and laid in bed, going over her plans to pass the time.

When Waverly was sure that everyone else had gone in for the night, she emerged from her bedroom fully dressed. She snuck down the creaky stairs. She did not make a sound, well-trained from a childhood spent trying not to attract her daddy’s attention. She put on a pair of shoes and went out the front door. She made sure the homestead’s gates were open. She knew that Gus and Wynonna would most likely wake up upon hearing her engine, but she figured that she could hightail it out of there before they even made it down the stairs.

She hopped into the jeep and fired up the ignition. She didn’t even wait for it to warm up before throwing it into drive and zooming off.

As the homestead got smaller and smaller in her rearview mirror, Waverly let out a laugh. She had never left home without anyone knowing before. Not even when she was living in the dorms at university. Not even when she was dating Champ Hardy. It was oddly liberating.

Her first stop was Doc Holliday’s home. He opened the door in a bright blue robe over his sleeping clothes. His hair and moustache were dishevelled. “Miss Waverly Earp,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Are you kidding? It’s only eleven-thirty,” Waverly said.

“Is it? I’m getting old,” Doc said, yawning. “How may I be of service to you?”

“Where did you bring Nicole?” Waverly asked.

“She asked to be dropped off at the sheriff’s station,” Doc said.

Waverly took in that information. Nicole had chosen to turn herself in. “Do you know if she’s still there?”

Doc rubbed his eyes. “Waverly, I don’t know. As far as I know, she’s gotten herself into some trouble,” he said. “Does Wynonna know that you’re looking for her?”

“Wynonna knows nothing, and as far as I’m concerned, neither do you,” Waverly said, glaring at Doc.

“Message received,” Doc said. “You could try the station. I believe the sheriff had let the Mounties borrow their basement. But if they really wanted her, they’d have packed up and taken her away by now.”

“Damn it,” Waverly said. She didn’t consider the possibility of the sergeant whisking Nicole away as soon as she turned herself in. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Glad to be of service,” Doc said. “Can I return to my bedroom now?”

“Sure thing,” Waverly said. She even shut the door for him. She got back in her jeep and drove to the sheriff’s station. The station was open at all hours of the day, but had reduced presence at night. Purgatory was a small town, and it only seemed to get smaller. Waverly knew that the sheriff deputies had high turnover. Most of them were also from out of town. If she was lucky, whoever it was behind the counter wouldn’t recognise her. She could dupe them.

“Waverly?”

“Oh shit.”

The skinny deputy smiled at her. “Sorry, what was that?” he asked.

Waverly forced a grin back at him. “Robin! Hey!” she exclaimed. “You’re a deputy? I thought you wanted to get your masters.”

“Oh, you know, I had to come home and take care of my dad,” Robin said. “And this place,” he gestured around him, “was hiring.”

“Right.” Waverly nodded. Her task tonight just got a little bit more difficult. But Robin Jett was as earnest—and unfortunately, as gullible—as a Labrador puppy. It was worth the attempt.

“Slim pickings, I know,” Robin said. “I passed the physical, though! Although I think they might have lowered the requirements.” He cleared his throat and straightened up in his seat. “Anyway, how can I help you, Waverly?”

“Uh, could you check the drunk tank? My sister hasn’t come home,” Waverly said.

“Wynonna? I haven’t checked anyone into the drunk tank,” Robin said.

“Yes, Wynonna. She might have been checked in a little earlier. You know her.” Waverly pumped her fists sheepishly. “She can get rowdy.”

Robin laughed. “She hasn’t changed one bit, then,” he said. “Though last I heard, she hasn’t been seen in Purgatory for nearly a month.”

“She can be like a thief in the night.”

“It’s still pretty early,” Robin said.

“Uh, I’ve already been to Shorty’s. She’s not there,” Waverly lied.

Robin’s eyes widened. “And Pussy Willows?”

Waverly tried not to giggle at how Robin said ‘Pussy Willows’. “Not there either,” she said, shaking her head. “Robin, I wouldn’t be coming here if I wasn’t concerned.”

“All right.” Robin stood up. “You sit tight. I’ll go check for you.” He disappeared down the corridor towards the drunk tank.

“Sorry, Robin,” Waverly muttered, as she bolted down the stairs to the basement level. She had been here before, while doing research on a paper she wrote for university. It housed the sheriff’s case archives and a couple of unused workspaces. And one of them had the light on. Waverly burst in through the door. It opened into a wide workspace, which was mostly empty.

A young, brown-skinned man was seated behind one of the few desks on the far wall, his feet propped up. He had his headphones on and his eyes closed, and he was humming along to a song.

“Is that One Direction?” Waverly asked, more to herself.

The man’s eyes opened. He yanked his headphones off. It _was_ indeed One Direction. “Who are you?” he asked. “Are you lost?”

“I’m looking for Nicole Haught,” Waverly said.

The man stood up and staggered against the wall. He examined Waverly. “You don’t look like one of them.”

“One of who?” Waverly asked. She moved towards him.

The man was feeling around the desk drawers for something. “Don’t move! Stay where you are!” He had a pistol aimed at Waverly.

Waverly had grown up around guns, but never had been on the wrong end of one before. She raised both her hands in the air. “Easy now,” she said, her voice shaking. She guessed that this man assumed that she had something to do with whatever Nicole was involved in. “My name’s Waverly Earp. Nicole was staying with me.”

“I am under strict orders that Nicole Haught can’t leave the premises,” the man said. He brandished the pistol nervously. “And I will do whatever it takes!”

One of the smaller office doors opened, revealing Nicole, wearing a tank top and shorts. Her short hair was pushed back, as if she had just gotten up and ran her fingers through it. “What’s going on?” She instantly became alert when she spotted the gun in the man’s hand. “Jeremy. What the hell are you doing?”

“Dolls said you can’t leave this place,” the man, named Jeremy, said. “I’m just protecting you.”

“This is Waverly, Jeremy,” Nicole said. “She’s a friend.”

“Dolls said you should stay here, Nicole,” Jeremy warned. His eyes were still on Waverly.

“Jeremy, I’m not going anywhere,” Nicole said. “Put the damn gun down.”

A voice from behind Waverly spoke. “You heard her.”

Waverly whirled around to come face to face with her sister, who was pointing her own pistol at Jeremy. “Wynonna? What the hell?!”

“You should really check the back of your car before going anywhere, baby girl.” Wynonna looked at Jeremy. “Don’t make any sudden movements. Put the gun down.”

“No,” Jeremy said. His voice had taken on a higher pitch.

Wynonna cocked her gun. “Don’t make me say it again, little man.”

Jeremy looked more panicked than ever. “Officer Jett should be here by now,” he said.

“Officer Jett will be spending the night in the drunk tank,” Wynonna said.

Waverly turned to her sister, wide-eyed. Wynonna responded to her with a shrug.

“Jeremy, put the gun down.” It was Nicole who spoke this time. “Wynonna. You too.”

“We’ll do it at the same time,” Wynonna said. She decocked her gun. “On three,” she told Jeremy. “One, two,” she bent down to lower the gun to the floor and watched as Jeremy mirrored her actions. “Three.” Both guns were on the floor.

Waverly and Nicole breathed sighs of relief as they watched Wynonna and Jeremy straighten up.

“We’ll be taking Nicole,” Wynonna said.

“Why?” Nicole asked.

For a moment, Wynonna couldn’t come up with an answer. “Because fuck the police! That’s why,” she eventually said.

“They can’t just keep you in here, Nicole,” Waverly said.

Jeremy lifted a finger. “Uh, actually -”

“Shut up, nerd,” Wynonna snapped. “Come on, Haughtshot. We’ve come all this way. I’ve already threatened _two_ officers of the law. I’m not leaving here without you.”

But Nicole wasn’t looking at Wynonna. She was looking at Waverly. “I’ll grab my things.” She went back inside the small office.

“What are you doing here?” Waverly asked her sister.

“I got your back, Waves,” Wynonna answered.

* * *

They raced back to the homestead in silence. Waverly was behind the wheel, Wynonna next to her, and Nicole was in the back seat with her pack, wearing her down jacket and covering her bare legs with a scratchy blanket that Wynonna had tossed at her. Waverly had to give Wynonna credit for not saying a word the whole time, because she knew that she must have been bursting with questions.

As soon as they parked, Waverly ran out to lock the homestead gates. She should really talk to Wynonna about automation. She followed Wynonna and Nicole back to the cabin. Nicole was seated on the bed, while Wynonna sat on the stool. Waverly decided to stay standing behind her.

“Waves, can you get the heater?” Wynonna requested, referring to the panel heater mounted to the side wall of the cabin.

“Sure.” Waverly reached over to turn it on. It would take at least twenty-five minutes to get noticeably warm.

“Dolls is gonna come back for me, you know,” was the first thing out of Nicole’s mouth.

“Why wasn’t he there anyway? And I thought you were just a witness. Why did he have you sequestered in the sheriff’s basement?” Wynonna asked.

“I don’t know,” Nicole said. “I met him there after Doc dropped me off, and then he got a call halfway through our conversation. He had to leave immediately, so he told Jeremy that we had to stay there until he got back.”

“He didn’t even check you into a motel?” Wynonna asked.

“As I said, he just left,” Nicole said. “And I don’t know what Jeremy’s exact instructions were, but that guy’s nerves are shot. You saw him.”

Wynonna nodded. “He didn’t tell you where Dolls went?”

“I don’t think he knew either. Dolls seems to lack resources, though,” Nicole said. “He seems to be the only one on this case. He wouldn’t have had to leave if he had other people on his team.”

“Yeah, his only teammate didn’t even know that he still had the safety on on his gun,” Wynonna remarked.

At this, Waverly couldn’t resist smiling. To outsiders, Wynonna seemed arrogant and reckless, but she was more observant than she let on. Over the years, she had learned to assess situations and act accordingly, and she had gotten damn good at it.

“Jeremy is his _IT_ guy,” Nicole said. “I doubt he knows how to work a gun.”

Wynonna shrugged. “Yup, he’s definitely underfunded,” she said. “Anyway, enough about Dolls and Jeremy. We,” she gestured between her and Waverly, “we took a risk getting you out of there, Nicole. So you gotta tell us what’s going on.”

“You didn’t have to get me out of there, for the record,” Nicole retorted.

“Were you a drug dealer?” Wynonna asked. “Are you a snitch now?”

Nicole’s brows furrowed. “What the hell? Of course not.”

“A drug dealer or a snitch?”

“Wynonna,” Nicole and Waverly said in unison.

“Give me something to work with here, Haught,” Wynonna said. “Or you’re going back to the sheriff’s basement.”

“I wasn’t gonna leave in the first place!” Nicole hissed. “The only reason I did was because it was stupid for you guys to get yourselves in so much trouble and have me not go with you anyway.”

The realisation hit Waverly. “You’re not running from the cops.”

Nicole looked at her. “I’m not running from the cops.”

Wynonna turned to Waverly. “Sit down, kid,” she said, pointing at the bed. “It’s weird when you’re taller than everyone.”

Waverly obliged. She sat on the bed next to Nicole. “Then who are you running from?” she asked.

“You were never in Athabasca, were you?” Wynonna asked. “Tell us what you really do.”

Nicole took a deep breath. “I’m an investigator,” she said. “My company gets all sorts of clients. This last job was a contract for the Mounties, tracking organised crime in rural Alberta. It was just recon, you know. Data gathering.”

“Don’t they have undercover cops for that?” Waverly asked.

“They’re all in the cities,” Nicole said. “Not enough cops to go around.”

“Okay, so who were you investigating?” Wynonna asked.

“A cult,” Nicole said.

Wynonna’s eyes widened. “Excuse me? Did you just say a cult?”

“Well, it’s more like one of those creepy evangelical churches. At first it was simple, figure out if it’s really just a bunch of religious weirdos, or if there’s something more sinister going on. Sexual abuse and all that stuff,” Nicole said. “But it was much deeper than that. They were fleecing their followers for their money, and using the money to fund several illegal operations.”

“Like what?” Waverly asked.

“Meth. And, ironically,” Nicole chuckled bitterly, “brothels.”

“Did you join the cult?” Wynonna asked.

Nicole shook her head. “No, I was just cult-adjacent. I moved into the town where they were gaining ground, and a lot of their population were buying into it. They don’t really force anyone to be in their congregation. Or at least they weren’t at that stage yet. So I was mostly left alone,” she explained. “But then after a couple of months, I started asking too many questions, and then their recruiting tactics got a little bit more aggressive.”

“And then they figured you out,” Wynonna said.

“Yup. That’s my suspicion anyway. That’s why I had to leave. But I couldn’t run to the cops straight away. That would just be too obvious,” Nicole said. “I had to lay low for a while.”

“So you came to our homestead.”

“I wandered onto here by chance,” Nicole said. “I wasn’t even planning to drag this shit into the picture.”

“I believe you,” Waverly said. She shot Wynonna a look, daring her to disagree. Nicole had been nothing but helpful to them. Waverly doubted that she was intended to bring trouble into their lives on purpose.

“Just so you know, if Dolls comes to get me tomorrow, I’m going with him,” Nicole said. “It’s for the best.”

Wynonna laughed. “Never pegged you for a regular old goody-two-shoes, Haught,” she said.

Nicole laughed back, though hers lacked humour. “Well, surprise.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I am back from the sticks! Rural New Zealand is fantastic, guys, even when I considered that most of the rolling pastures (mostly cattle and dairy farms) used to be lush green forests back in the pre-colonial days. Oh, how I fantasised about taking back some of those farms and planting trees on them again!
> 
> Anyway, in this chapter, we have a poignant scene with a VIP (very important porker), and a revelation about Wynonna's stubbornness regarding one Nicole Haught... Keep your comments coming, I do enjoy reading them.

The Mounties were quicker than Nicole expected them to be. Nicole wasn’t complaining; she was just relieved that they got to her before Pastor Clootie’s people did. She had never worked with the Mounties before. Her previous assignments had been corporate investigations, assisting on auditing state departments, background checks and the like. She had a decent history of closing cases, so when an assignment with the Mounties came up, her employers considered her right away.

When Wynonna confronted her in the cabin, Nicole didn’t put up a fight. She didn’t bother to correct Wynonna. In fact, it was probably better for her not to tell anyone what she did. She agreed to leave the homestead with Doc the following morning.

Doc was quite a reckless driver, which to Nicole, somehow made sense, despite him being a medical professional. They drove through the prairies until they reached a small town that looked like it hadn’t been refreshed since the 1900s. Doc navigated the Cadillac through the main street, which gave Nicole the chance to look around. That was when she noticed it.

“Where are the men?” she asked.

“Mining accident took them two years ago,” Doc answered gruffly. “It was all over the news.”

Now Nicole remembered why the town called Purgatory sounded so familiar. The mine explosion was on the news for weeks, but Nicole, being the city kid that she was, never took much stock in it. Miners, and their problems, weren’t really on her radar back then. “All the men?”

“Of course not. I’m still here,” Doc said, a small smile on his face. “But yes. It killed most of them.”

* * *

Nicole and Sergeant Dolls didn’t get to talk much before he had to run off again, for some unknown reason. He told Nicole not to leave the station at any cost, and got Jeremy to watch her. Nicole liked Jeremy almost instantly, but was confused on how a guy like him ended up working with the Mounties. He displayed his eagerness too obviously. He was lax about security but deathly nervous about the prospect of being unsafe. Nicole just hoped that Dolls would return soon.

She and Jeremy made a makeshift bedroom out of an office which had a relatively clean couch. Nicole threw some of her unwashed clothes over it just in case. She managed to get herself to sleep, but was jolted awake by the commotion happening in the bullpen. Forgetting the fact that she had barely any clothes on, she jumped out of the couch and yanked the office door open.

The sight of Waverly Earp was enough to make Nicole remember that she wasn’t dressed.

“Put the damn gun down!” Nicole commanded, though in her head she was pleading.

Wynonna arrived with a gun, turning the whole thing into a standoff, which Nicole managed to defuse. She thanked herself for having the presence of mind, because Waverly just stood there, frozen, in between two people holding guns. One of them nervous, and the other one too trigger happy.

Nicole never planned to leave the station, but because of the whole rigmarole of the Earp sisters turning up, she had no choice. It would be unproductive, not to mention embarrassing, if they left empty-handed. Besides, Waverly was looking down the wrong end of a gun. She would probably flip out if Nicole had refused to come. And so Nicole went back to the homestead and told them the truth. 

Well, some of it.

* * *

The next morning, while getting coffee in the kitchen, Nicole ran into Gus. She had lost the warmth in her eyes that she usually had when they spoke to each other.

“The girls have told me that you’re some sort of fugitive,” she said.

“Witness, actually,” Nicole said.

Gus made a  _ tsk _ noise, as if what Nicole had said was irrelevant. She reached for the pot of coffee, which Nicole gladly handed to her. As she poured herself a mug, she murmured, “Just when I thought Wynonna was finally gonna be out of trouble.”

Nicole hesitated. “Can I make a respectful observation, Gus?”

Gus handed back the coffee pot. “It better be a good one.”

“Wynonna makes her own choices,” Nicole said. “I have nothing to do with it.”

Gus didn’t respond. Instead, she dumped two teaspoons of sugar into her coffee, and then added a dash of milk. She placed the milk back in the fridge, stirred her coffee, and took a sip while Nicole watched. Finally, she spoke: “Heard you went into Purgatory yesterday. How did you like it?”

“It’s,” Nicole searched for the word, “empty.”

“It’s a town on its last legs. Every month, more people just leave,” Gus said. “My husband left me some money. I’ve had my eye on this property just outside of Chilliwack.”

“But?”

“But I can’t leave the girls,” Gus said. “Yes, I know they’re grown now. But I can’t seem to stop taking care of them.”

“Your husband,” Nicole tread lightly, “was he in the mine?”

“Oh no!” Gus shook her head. “He had a heart attack, the year before the explosion. He was a butcher. He grew up on a pig farm. He taught the girls how to take care of the land. He loved them and they loved him. Especially Waverly.”

“She must have been devastated when he passed away,” Nicole said.

Gus nodded. “She was a wreck.”

Wynonna came storming in through the living room. “Haught!” she barked. “They’re here.”

Time to face the music. She followed Wynonna outside to the gate. Two vehicles were parked on the other side: a black SUV and a police cruiser. Sergeant Dolls hopped out of his SUV, while a portly man with grey hair and a moustache emerged from the cruiser.

Wynonna greeted the sight with amusement. “I can’t believe he brought Nedley,” she said, more to herself than to Nicole. They reached the two men. “Good morning, Sergeant Dolls.” With the biggest shit-eating grin on her face, she turned to the other man. “Sheriff Nedley.”

“Wynonna Earp,” the sheriff grunted. “It’s been too long.”

“My truck’s broken,” Wynonna said.

“That’s for the best, I reckon,” the sheriff retorted.

Dolls cleared his throat. “I’m here for Miss Haught,” he said.

“Well, I’m here because I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Earp,” Sheriff Nedley said. “Locking poor Robin Jett in the drunk tank? He’s lucky it was empty!”

“For a Thursday, I know right?” Wynonna quipped.

“You also held my partner at gunpoint,” Dolls said.

“Wait. You mean the skinny little guy? He’s not your  _ partner _ !” Wynonna laughed. “Unless you mean the  _ other  _ kind of partner. No judgement, dude. Love is love.”

Dolls simply glared at her.

Nicole placed a hand on Wynonna’s arm. It was not the time for wisecracks. “Look, I can explain this. I wasn’t going to leave, but on account of what happened to Officer Jett and to Jeremy, I decided to go with them,” she said. “I didn’t know what else Wynonna was capable of doing.”

“ _ Hey _ !” Wynonna protested. “You came willingly. And also, I didn’t act alone. It wasn’t even my idea.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t Waverly’s idea to lock my deputy in a cell,” Nedley said.

“Oh sure.” Wynonna folded her arms. “See the best in Waverly, like you  _ always  _ do.”

The conversation was getting out of hand. Nicole tightened her grip on Wynonna’s arm. “Guys!” she interrupted. “Look, Sergeant Dolls came to get me, I’m going to go with him, all right? Whatever else this,” she gestured between Wynonna and Nedley, “is, save it for later.”

Dolls looked at Nedley. “That seems sensible, Sheriff,” he said pointedly.

Wynonna tugged her arm away from Nicole. “Fine, Nicole can go with you -”

“Uh, Wynonna, that’s not really your -” Nicole began.

“Let me finish,” Wynonna cut her off. She turned back to Dolls. “Nicole can go with you as long as Nedley doesn’t punish me for locking young Robin in the drunk tank.  _ And _ she comes back here after you’ve finished talking to her.”

Dolls looked taken aback. “You’re not really in any position to negotiate.”

“I know they told you in the academy, ‘don’t negotiate with terrorists’. Well, I’m not a terrorist,” Wynonna said. “Just the regular old town nuisance. So what do you say?”

“I don’t think that Miss Haught is safe here,” Dolls said.

“She’s safer here than she is in Purgatory,” Wynonna said. 

Dolls blinked. “How so?”

A grin spread across Wynonna’s face. She was taking this as her clear time to shine. “You know, I was doing some thinking. You didn’t let Nicole out of the station. That either meant she was hostile or that she was going to be unsafe anywhere else in town, or anyone else with you,” she began. “Since she wasn’t in a cell and you left her with, uh, Jeremy, that crossed out hostile. Which meant you wanted her to be safe. Well, it doesn’t get any safer than this place. No internet connection, no cell signal, and the fine folk of Purgatory won’t even point anyone in this direction because they all fucking hate me.”

Nicole, impressed, couldn’t help but nod along.

Nedley turned to Dolls. “Look, Sergeant, she’s right.” He eyed Wynonna. “On  _ many  _ levels.”

Dolls didn’t even look at Nedley. “I’ll tell you where you’re wrong,” he said to Wynonna. “The people that Miss Haught has gotten in trouble with, if they catch wind of my trail, and if I have to keep coming back here to get her, then I’ll be bringing them straight to your door. I’m sure you don’t want that to happen.”

“We’ll bring her to you. We’ve got cars,” Wynonna said. “Or better yet, talk to her here.”

Nicole didn’t understand why Wynonna was fighting so hard for her. She was happy to go with Dolls.

“Fine.” Dolls was looking more and more tired as the conversation went on. “Bring her to the station tomorrow at midday. Don’t be late.” He went back to his SUV and got out of there without so much as a salute.

Nedley rested his thumbs on his service belt. “Hey, about Robin Jett -”

“Let it go, Nedley,” Wynonna said. “I know Robin. He probably has no hard feelings.”

“You’re right, he doesn’t,” Nedley agreed, shrugging. “But if I ever find another one of my deputies in a cell again…”

Wynonna smirked as she started to walk away. “You know where to find me!” she called out, before turning around and heading back towards the house.

As the last ones standing, Nicole and Nedley made eye contact. Nedley looked like he needed a shot of whiskey and then a nap. All Nicole could do in response was to shrug.

* * *

“I don’t understand,” Nicole said to Wynonna. “I’m okay to go back with Dolls. Get me out of your hair.”

“You’re  _ okay  _ to go with Dolls? Don’t let the cops keep using you, Nicole! They put you in danger because they can’t get enough of them to do a job that is apparently sorely needed,” Wynonna said. “You don’t owe them anything.”

“Ah, okay. You’re projecting.”

Wynonna huffed. “Waverly calls it a distrust for authority.”

“She got that right,” Nicole said. “Wynonna, seriously. Nobody’s gonna think you’re less of a badass because you didn’t successfully break me out of the sheriff’s station.”

“Uh, I  _ did _ break you out of the sheriff’s station,” Wynonna countered. “And also, I can’t let you go. You said you’d fix my truck.” She paused. “Hang on, can you even fix my truck?”

Nicole shoved her hands in her pockets. “I fixed Waverly’s jeep, didn’t I?”

“Okay, so after I go drop you off at the station tomorrow, I’ll buy the parts, and then we come back here and fix my truck,” Wynonna said. “Sounds like a plan? Great! Anyway, I gotta go.” She jerked her head in the direction of the back door. “Gus wants some rabbits killed.”

Nicole watched her leave. “Okay, good talk,” she said to the door. She leaned against the kitchen counter and exhaled loudly.

“Stubborn, isn’t she?” Waverly entered the kitchen.

“I don’t know how you put up with it,” Nicole said.

“Wynonna has two modes. She either doesn’t give a crap about you, or she will murder anyone who even tries to  _ annoy  _ you,” Waverly said. “Welcome to the latter.”

“I gathered that about her, you know, but I don’t understand why she’d go to the mat for me,” Nicole said. “Maybe she just hates Purgatory and the cops more.”

“Maybe.” Waverly was silent for a moment, the kind where she looked like she was about to say something but chose not to say it. 

Nicole decided not to push her on it. “You missed Sheriff Nedley this morning,” she said.

Waverly smiled at the mention of the sheriff. “Isn’t he such a character?”

“He seems to have history with you and Wynonna,” Nicole remarked.

“We grew up around him. He was our daddy’s deputy. His wife died early on, so he asked Gus to take care of his daughter. It meant that I had a friend, too, since Wynonna was sent away and I was alone.” Sadness softened Waverly’s eyes as she explained. “We’re best friends to this day. And Sheriff Nedley also happened to be Teenage Wynonna’s mortal enemy.”

“He likes you, though,” Nicole said.

Waverly shrugged. “I was the good child. I mean, you’ve met Wynonna. I  _ had  _ to be the good child,” she said. “Besides, he likes Wynonna, too. If you’re a small town sheriff and a kid keeps outwitting you, you can’t help but like them even just a little bit.”

“Does the rest of the town like Wynonna? Even just a little bit?”

Waverly snorted. “Nope. They don’t have the fondest memories of her, even when she was basically a child when all that stuff went down. Purgatory’s not much for forgiveness.”

* * *

Dolls set down a styrofoam cup of coffee in front of Nicole. “It’s just from the machine upstairs. Officer Jett said their ‘French’ coffee was pretty good,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“I am really not picky.” Nicole didn’t tell him that she wasn’t in the mood for coffee anyway.

Dolls sat down beside her. “Shall we get started?” He flipped open the laptop on the desk and let it boot. “What have you got for me?”

Nicole had the plastic envelope and the spiral-bound notebook on the desk. She opened the envelope and pulled out the memory card, and then slid the envelope and notebook towards Dolls. “Those are notes and copies of documents that I’ve gathered.” She handed Dolls the memory card. “And photos that I took.”

Dolls slotted the memory card into the laptop’s reader, and then started flipping through the notebook. “Good work,” he said quietly, as he skimmed pages and pages of Nicole’s neat, meticulous handwriting. “What’s in the envelope?”

“Bank statements. You’d be surprised how many people don’t shred them for privacy,” Nicole said. “I worked at the recycling plant, so I got quite a few.”

“I’m more surprised how many people still don’t receive them electronically,” Dolls said. He closed the notebook and reached for the documents inside the envelope. “Anything from Clootie?”

Nicole shook her head. “He’s probably the only person in that town who either shreds his statements or gets them electronically. But,” she pointed to a line she had highlighted in one of the statements, “the tithes his followers make are to an account under his church’s name.”

“Bulshar,” Dolls read, his nose wrinkling. “And people think that’s a real church?”

“People learn not to question what they want to believe in,” Nicole said. “What I don’t understand is why he lets the money go through the banks, if he’s just gonna use it for criminal activity.”

“Legitimacy, I guess. For declaring taxes and things like that,” Dolls mused. “If he is getting cash, he can get away with not declaring all of it because he can speak for the money in this account.”

“If we somehow get our hands on his transactions, we’ll see the money that’s going out to the gangs,” Nicole said. “Although it’s probably going to be cash withdrawals.”

“Yes, most probably. This is great, Haught.” Dolls started flicking through the photographs on the memory card. Most of them were of Clootie, his church and his followers. Some of them were photos of the criminal suspects that Nicole spotted him with. Dolls stopped on one of them. “Wait a minute. I know this guy.” It was a photograph of Clootie having a conversation with a man with a distinctive trendy haircut and a greying beard.

“Who is he?”

“Bobo Del Rey,” Dolls said. “His gang operates around here. I suspected that he was linked with Clootie. I was concerned that he’d be looking for you.”

“Shit.” Nicole blew a low whistle. “I picked a good town, didn’t I?”

Dolls picked up on her sarcasm. “You sure did.”

* * *

The hog was  _ huge _ . Nicole didn’t even know they could get pigs to that size. He ambled around by the front porch, nuzzling Waverly’s chest. Waverly giggled as she walked away from him, and towards Nicole. “I’m trying to get him nice and relaxed before the big moment,” she told her.

“The big moment where he dies and then gets served to a bunch of rich tourists?” Nicole asked.

Waverly didn’t even flinch. “If you want nice, juicy, tender pork, then you gotta keep the pigs happy. You don’t want to eat meat from a stressed out animal. And people don’t pay big money for stressed out animals,” she said. She spotted something in the distance. “Oh, he’s here. Can you get the gate, Nicole?” she requested. “I need to make sure he,” Waverly referred to the hog, “doesn’t make a run for it. Though I’d totally root for him if he does, if he wasn’t going to lose me fourteen hundred bucks.”

Nicole opened the gate for the white truck that was driving towards the homestead. Two men came out of the truck, both clad in plaid flannel shirts and jeans. By their similar features, Nicole guessed they were father and son. The father had a beer gut and salt and pepper hair, while the son was buff, blonde and had a Hollywood-ready smirk. Nicole disliked him instantly.

“Herbert!” Waverly grinned up at the older man. She turned to the younger one, but her greeting was not quite was enthusiastic. “Champ.”

The younger man didn’t seem to read Waverly’s coldness. “Waverly!” He opened his arms for a hug, and after a few seconds, when he realised he wasn’t getting one, he awkwardly lowered them.

Herbert Hardy walked up to the hog. “Is this our VIP today?” He winked at Waverly. “Very important porker.”

Waverly laughed. “Yes, he is,” she said.

“Champ,” the butcher called on his son. “Set the ramps up.”

Champ had spotted Nicole and was giving her a once over. “New farmhand, Waverly?” he asked. “If you had needed one, you could have just asked me back again.”

Nicole could feel herself tensing up. She didn’t like the look or the sound of this guy.

“I didn’t even know you were back from the rodeo,” Waverly said to him.

Champ’s cheeks reddened. “Uh, I realised it wasn’t for me,” he said.

Herbert, who was stroking the hog between the ears, chuckled. “I see he has mastered the art of the understatement,” he said in a low voice.

Champ frowned as he set up the ramps. “All right, bring him in.”

Herbert and Waverly ushered the hog towards the truck, up the ramp, and onto the truck bed. They stepped aside to let Champ remove the ramps and lock the truck up.

“Wynonna will be at the abattoir tomorrow,” Waverly told Herbert. “She’s just gone for a drive.”

“Oh, her truck’s fixed?” Herbert asked, craning his neck to look for Wynonna’s blue and white pickup.

“Yeah.” Waverly nodded towards Nicole. “Nicole fixed it.”

“You got a better farmhand this time around, eh?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Waverly agreed, smiling at Nicole.

Nicole smiled back at her.

The hog stuck his snout out from the bars that kept him from jumping out of the truck bed. He grunted loudly, perhaps to get Waverly’s attention.

Waverly walked towards him and rested her forehead against his snout. “See ya later, big guy.” She stepped backwards. “Thanks again, Herbert.”

“Anytime, Waverly.”

The father and son got back into the truck. The truck turned around and drove out of the homestead, Herbert Hardy tooting the horn as they got further away. Nicole jogged over to the close the gate, and the noticed that Waverly was staring into the distance, her eyes clouding over.

“Hey, are you okay?” Nicole asked her.

Waverly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “God,” she sighed. “This is why I’m a vegetarian.”

* * *

Nicole had turned in for the night when there was a knock on the cabin door.

“Haught,” Wynonna spoke from the other side, “you decent?”

Nicole pulled a sweater over her tank top. Wynonna would just have to deal with her bare legs; it wasn’t like she hadn’t seen them before. Nicole opened the cabin door, recoiling against the cold air from outside. Wynonna was standing there, holding a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.

“I was about to go to sleep,” Nicole said.

“This’ll help you get there,” Wynonna said. She dragged the stool over to the low table, where she placed the whiskey and the two glasses. She sat down on the stool and poured the whiskey. She looked at Nicole and pointed at the armchair. “Sit down.”

Nicole obliged.

“This was Gus and Curtis’s cabin, when they lived with us,” Wynonna explained. “When Curtis died, we had Gus move into the house. No good for her to be all alone at night.”

“Fair enough,” Nicole said.

Wynonna picked up one of the glasses and handed it to Nicole. When Nicole accepted it, she picked up the other glass and tilted it towards Nicole. “Cheers, man.” They clinked glasses. “Thank you for fixing my truck.”

“You said that already,” Nicole said.

“Did I?”

“Say it again and one might accuse you of being too nice,” Nicole said.

Wynonna took a large drink of whiskey, and swallowed it without cringing. “There are worse things to be accused of,” she said. She opened the bottle to pour some more into her glass. “Look, I know you’re wondering why I want you here on the homestead.”

Nicole nodded. “Do you finally have an answer for me?”

“You’re good at finding people, right?” Wynonna asked.

“I’m good at finding people who owe money, I guess,” Nicole answered.

Wynonna reached in her pocket and pulled out a piece of folded, glossy card. She gave it to Nicole.

It was a photograph of three girls in matching dresses. They all had brown hair, in varying shades. One of the girls had mischievous steel blue eyes. Nicole guessed that was Wynonna. Young Wynonna had her arm around the shoulders of the smallest girl, whose hair was in pigtails, cheesing it for the camera. “Waverly,” she murmured. And then she focused on the last girl. She was closer to Wynonna’s age, around her early teens, and she had mousy brown hair and a haughty expression. She looked up at Wynonna, who was watching her examine the photo. “Who’s this?” she asked.

“That’s Willa. Our eldest,” Wynonna said. “I need you to help me find her.”

“Where did she go?” Nicole asked. It was the first time she had heard of a third Earp sister. Gus and Waverly never mentioned her.

“The official story was that she ran away,” Wynonna said. “But I know Willa wouldn’t do that. She was taken. By Bobo Del Rey. And I think he’s been hiding her from us.”

Nicole knew about Bobo Del Rey. Dolls had filled her in about him. He was the leader of a gang who called themselves the Revenants, full of low-rent thugs and recidivist rednecks who lived in a trailer park on the outskirts of Purgatory. Since the mining explosion, the Revenants’ influence over Purgatory was growing, and local law enforcement were doing less to stop them. Dolls had a theory that a lot of the surviving business in Purgatory were financed by Revenant money.

“Do you have proof of this?” Nicole asked.

“That’s what you’re here for, Haughtshot,” Wynonna said. “We find the proof, we get her out of there, and then we destroy Bobo.”

“Okay.” 

“Is that a yes?”

“I’ll do my best to help you, Wynonna.” Nicole didn’t know how to tell Wynonna that destroying Bobo was going to take a hell of a lot more effort now that he was being bankrolled by a criminal cult. If anything, finding Willa was going to be the easy part. 

Wynonna pulled another item out of her pocket. An envelope. She handed it to Nicole.

Nicole opened it and peered inside. It contained several fifty dollar bills. “What’s this?”

“For your services. A deposit,” Wynonna said. “I’m sorry I can’t pay you your normal rate, but I figured you weren’t doing this for nothing.”

“Wynonna -”

“Seriously, take it,” Wynonna said. She sipped her whiskey. “Oh, and you can’t tell Waverly about this.”

“Why not?” Nicole asked.

“I don’t want her to get her hopes up,” Wynonna said. “Promise me this is between us, Nicole.”

Nicole drank her whiskey in one swig. “I promise.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, here we go again! Can you believe we're at Chapter Five already? Because I can't! Anyway, I am officially back to work, and I can tell you now that I've almost finished the last chapter of this fic, so my work schedule shouldn't affect the upload schedule too badly. Your comments really mean a lot to me. I have a stressful job that doesn't leave me much time for writing when I'm working, so just interacting with other people in the fandom is a joyful reprieve to me. So leave me comments and I will respond to them!
> 
> This week, Wynonna has even _more_ terrible ideas, Waverly jumps to hilarious conclusions, and there's Wayhaught if you squint... (Because Wynonna sure doesn't see it!)

Wynonna drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as Nicole got into the passenger seat and clicked her seatbelt into place. She turned her signal on, looked in her wing mirror, and then pulled out onto the street. “You’ve been meeting with Sergeant Dolls often,” she commented.

“I’m helping him build a case,” Nicole said. “His superiors are hesitant to take action.” She had been sketchy about the details of whatever they were working on, which Wynonna understood, because Dolls had probably set some rules and Nicole looked like a rule-follower. It didn’t make Wynonna any less curious, though.

“Typical,” Wynonna said. “He’s getting you pretty involved, though. I thought you were just a contractor.”

“I just thought I’d give him a hand. It’s just him and Jeremy. Which is odd, but I guess the cops don’t want to put more resources in unless they’ve got a solid case,” Nicole said.

“Wish they had been as cautious towards small-time weed dealers in the early 2000s.”

“Yeah, I get it, you’re  _ woke _ , or whatever.” Nicole changed the subject. “How was the hog?”

“He’s a fine piece of meat,” Wynonna said. She was happy about the fourteen hundred dollars in her bank account. “Seeing Champ was a surprise, though. I thought he was staying with the rodeo for good.”

“I met him on Sunday. What a tool,” Nicole said.

“Did you know he begged to be called ‘Champ’? His real name is Herbert Hardy Junior.” Wynonna laughed. “I’m glad Waverly dumped him.”

A dark look passed over Nicole’s face. “Waverly  _ dated  _ him?”

“They were high school sweethearts. Champ even worked on the homestead for a summer,” Wynonna said. “He quit after I shot at him.”

“What?”

Wynonna went on like Nicole didn’t ask the question. “It’s okay, though. His parents didn’t press charges. I think they’ve been tempted to shoot him, too. They were just waiting for someone else to do it.” She slapped the steering wheel, laughing. “Herbert Junior. What a goddamn dumbass.”

“I can’t believe Waverly dated him,” Nicole said.

“At least she’s over that. Some poor girl’s gonna look at him one day and see him as marriage material,” Wynonna said. “He’s one of the only ones left!” Since the explosion, most of the young women had left Purgatory to have better chances at finding a husband. There were a few, though, who seemed bound to the place, and they didn’t even have farms to take care of. Wynonna didn’t understand them.

Nicole sighed. “Yeah, I’m just glad I’ve never had to think of men in my future.”

“Same, girl. Same,” Wynonna said.

“Uhm.” Nicole cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m a lesbian.”

Wynonna let that revelation hang in the air. She never quite knew how to respond to something like this. Some people wanted to make a big deal out of it, some people didn’t. “Uh, congratulations, I guess?” she ventured. “I’m straight.”

“I know,” Nicole said.

“But I’m  _ happy _ to flirt with you.”

Nicole laughed. “No, I think I’m good.”

“Come on, Haughtstuff,” Wynonna teased.

Nicole rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Earp,” she said. “Oh, is that a garden centre coming up?” She pointed at a sign down the stretch of road. “Mind if we stop by? I just need to buy something.”

“Sure, since you asked so nicely.”

* * *

There was something wrong with Waverly.

Wynonna understood that her sister would get occasional bouts of cabin fever. She felt that way sometimes, too. It was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a day in Purgatory. Wynonna would see Waverly off after their work in the morning, and then meet her at Shorty’s for drinks in the evening. But somehow, Waverly’s mood had been off for days, and the fresh stack of books from Purgatory Library wasn’t fixing it.

After dinner cleanup, Waverly went straight upstairs after terse goodbyes to Wynonna, Nicole and Gus.

“What’s gotten into her?” Gus asked Wynonna.

Wynonna shrugged. “I’ll handle it.” She went upstairs and knocked on Waverly’s door. “Waves?”

“Wynonna, I’m not in the mood,” Waverly said through the door.

Wynonna decided to open the door anyway. Waverly was sitting cross-legged on her bed, frowning at a closed book. Wynonna walked inside her bedroom and shut the door. “You haven’t been in the mood for days, baby girl,” she said. “Can we talk about it?”

“It’s fine, Wynonna,” Waverly said. “You’re an adult. You make your own choices.”

Now Wynonna was confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re keeping Nicole around because you’re sleeping with her,” Waverly said. “That’s unfair. She said she wanted to go. You shouldn’t just force her to stay here because you’re  _ using  _ her.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who snuck out in the middle of the night to -” Wynonna just took in the first part of Waverly’s sentence. “Wait, did you say I was  _ sleeping  _ with Nicole? Like, having sex with her?”

Waverly’s brows furrowed. “Yes! What did you think I meant? Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

“Oh my god.” Wynonna collapsed into a fit of laughter, even though she could see that it was only making Waverly angrier. “Me? Sleeping with Nicole Haught? Waves, I know she’s smoking hot, but I’m straight.” Wynonna couldn’t believe she was talking about her sexuality for the second time this week.

“Then why did you break her out of the station?” Waverly asked.

“What? That was  _ your  _ idea,” Wynonna said. She didn’t actually know what Waverly had in mind when she chose to hide in the back of her jeep.

Waverly scratched her head. “No! I just wanted to know what she was up to,” she said. “I had no plans of taking her with me, especially if she was told to stay there. I thought you broke her out of there because you guys were a thing.”

Again, Wynonna laughed. “What makes you think we’re a thing?”

“You keep going into the cabin at night,” Waverly said. “Don’t think I didn’t see.”

Wynonna realised that Waverly had been keeping track of her late night visits to Nicole. She had been using Nicole as a sounding board for her plans to track Willa down. Of course, Waverly couldn’t find out about that just yet. “We just have a couple of drinks together,” she assured Waverly. “Saves me from going to Shorty’s and making a mess of myself.”

“So you’re not sleeping with her?” Waverly’s body relaxed a little bit. “I mean, it’s okay if you were. I don’t have a problem with that. I just was wondering about, uh, your ethics and all.”

“My ethics?”

“I just don’t want you to get into trouble again, Wynonna,” Waverly said. “Sergeant Dolls seems ruthless. I’m surprised he hasn’t gone after us for obstruction of justice or something.”

“So this is what you’re mad about,” Wynonna said.

“Yes,” Waverly admitted.

“I’m not sleeping with Nicole, Waverly,” Wynonna said. The thought of it still made her laugh. “And she’s staying here for a bit because she’s helping Dolls out. And she’ll be helping us out on the homestead, too.”

“She is?” Waverly asked.

Wynonna nodded, though she and Nicole hadn’t talked about it yet. She was sure that Nicole would be happy to do it anyway. “Yeah, why don’t you go take her to the pig pens tomorrow? Show her the ropes,” she suggested.

“All right.”

“Are you still mad at me?” Wynonna asked.

Waverly pretended to think about it. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Cool. Because I can’t stand the thought of you being mad at me, Waves.” Wynonna walked over to her sister and bent down to give her a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow? Have a good sleep.”

“You too,” Waverly said. “Good night.”

* * *

“Guess what Waverly asked me?” Wynonna asked.

“What?”

Wynonna told him.

“Waverly thought you were sleeping with Miss Haught?” Doc asked. “Jeez, her imagination is going places.”

“It’s overactive, yet she didn’t even picture  _ this _ .” Wynonna ran her hand down Doc’s bare chest, and then clasped her fingers around the covers that were draped over his waist. She pulled the covers up to his shoulders, so both of them were bundled together.

“What? Us playing doctor?” Doc’s moustache twitched at his attempt at a clever remark.

Wynonna wrinkled her nose. “Don’t ever say that again,” she said. “Anyway, I’m kinda flattered, that my sister thinks that I’m sexually fluid.” She smiled. “I think she imagines that my years in Europe have made me a woman of the world, in more ways than one.”

Doc laughed. They lay there together, sharing a silent moment. Doc stroked Wynonna’s forearm. “You know your houseguest is a glorified bounty hunter, right?”

“I don’t think it’s PC to say ‘bounty hunter’ anymore,” Wynonna said. “I mean, I don’t know what you call ‘em in back in Georgia. Nicole works for a company that does work for the Mounties.”

“I’ve heard rumours about the Mounties using people like that,” Doc said. “It’s dirty work. Dangerous work. They’re bounty hunters, I’m telling you.”

“What do you mean by ‘dangerous work’?” Wynonna asked.

Dolls shuffled up the bed, propping himself up on the pillows. The humour had faded from his eyes. “Well, Wynonna, I was talking to Rosita -”

“Who?”

“Rosita. The pharmacist,” Dolls said.

“Oh, Boobs McSeltzer.” Wynonna knew Rosita Bustillos. She was the scientist behind Purgatory’s once-roaring meth factory, who went on the straight and narrow just months after the mine explosion after taking over the local pharmacy. Some suspected that she was a narc for the cops, though since she was still alive and still in Purgatory, that seemed unlikely.

Dolls winced. “Wait until Waverly hears you  _ objectifying  _ women.”

“You’re not gonna tell her,” Wynonna said. “Anyway, what were you gonna say about Rosita?”

“She said that Sergeant Dolls and Miss Haught came around the pharmacy the other day to ask her a few questions,” Doc told her.

Wynonna frowned. “Why would they be asking her questions?” As far as she knew, Nicole was helping Dolls on a case about a cult gone criminal. There were no cults in Purgatory. There weren’t enough people in Purgatory for a cult to even bother.

Doc hesitated, before answering: “They’re investigating Bobo Del Rey.”

* * *

Wynonna drove to the homestead early the next morning. She didn’t want to be caught out slacking on her duties. She went around the back and ran into Waverly, who was smirking at her.

“Fun night?” she asked, casting her eye down Wynonna’s day-old outfit.

Wynonna sneered. “Not as fun as it could be with Nicole,” she teased.

“Shh!” Waverly turned to her, alarmed. “We promised not to talk about that.”

“Did we?” Wynonna raised a cheeky eyebrow. “I didn’t know.” And then she spotted Nicole, in khaki work pants and one of Wynonna’s fleece-lined barn coats. She was kneeling on the ground, mixing liquid fertiliser into a spraying can. There was a sureness to her movements. Wynonna kept watching as Nicole sealed the can, got to her feet, and began imbibing the vegetable patch. “You taught her how to do that?” she asked Waverly.

“Nope,” Waverly said, her gaze not leaving Nicole. “She told me she knows what she’s doing.”

“Surprises never end,” Wynonna said. She pouted. “And she looks better in that jacket than I do.”

Waverly hummed. “She does, doesn’t she?”

“Hey, you’re supposed to be boosting my ego here,” Wynonna protested.

Waverly waved her off. “I’ve decided not to let the pigs out.” She stomped her boot on the ground, and there was a soft crunching noise. “Third day of frost,” she pointed out. “I’m gonna go check on them. You coming?”

“Uh, give me a minute. I’m still kinda waking up. I’ll walk there,” Wynonna told her.

Waverly chuckled before hopping on the ATV. “Fine, whatever.” The ATV sputtered a few times before finally lurching forward, taking Waverly across the homestead.

When Wynonna was sure that Waverly was out of earshot, she marched over to Nicole. But before she could say anything, Nicole spoke first.

“Ever try growing grapes? For wine.”

Wynonna stared at her, confused. “Uh, no?”

“Gewürztraminer,” Nicole muttered.

“Gesundheit,” Wynonna responded.

Nicole rolled her eyes.

“So a little birdie told me that you and Dolls have been looking into Bobo Del Rey,” Wynonna said.

Nicole shot her a look from beneath the brim of her hat. “Rosita,” she muttered. “She told Doc, didn’t she? And you were with him last night.”

“I’m surprised how quickly you put that together.”

“She’s the town’s only pharmacist, and he’s a doctor. Who is like, obviously attracted to you and would tell you anything you asked. Duh,” Nicole said. 

“True.” Wynonna nodded. “Anyway! Why are you sniffing around Bobo Del Rey? I thought you were looking at a cult.”

“We’re not at the sniffing stage  _ yet _ .” Nicole walked around Wynonna so that she could start spraying the trees.

“Nicole, don’t you get it? This is the perfect way into finding Willa!” Wynonna exclaimed, following after her. It was a two birds and one stone scenario. The coincidences couldn’t have worked out better. “Are you planning to infiltrate the Revenants? If so, they’ll probably lead you straight to where Willa is.” She could imagine the women of the Revenants working together, probably running the brothel or packaging up the meth.

“Wynonna.” Nicole sighed. She walked further until she was right in the middle of the trees and half-heartedly aimed the spray gun at the roots, but didn’t pull the trigger. She started talking in a low voice, “Look, you can’t tell anyone about this, and you can’t tell anyone that I told you. But that cult I was investigating? It’s very likely that they have a criminal network throughout the Ghost River Triangle and that -”

“That the Revenants are part of this network,” Wynonna finished for her.

“Exactly.” Nicole pulled the trigger and they both watched the spray of fertiliser onto the earth. “My identity’s already compromised. They’re looking for me,” she said. “If they put their feelers out, told people to look for a redhead asking too many questions, then I’ve just thrown this whole investigation away.”

Nicole didn’t know it yet, but she just gave Wynonna an idea. “Deputise me,” she said. “I’ll join the Revenants.” It would be like walking into the dragon’s den, but she’d be helping Nicole  _ and  _ getting a better idea of what became of her sister.

“I don’t really have the authority to deputise anyone,” Nicole said.

“Then ask Dolls,” Wynonna told her.

“That’s not gonna happen. You know what he’s like!”

“Then let me talk to him,” Wynonna insisted. “Come on. The next time he asks you to meet him, I’ll come along. If you can’t talk to Dolls about this, I’ll do it myself.”

“Why do you need to talk to Dolls?”

At the sound of Waverly’s voice, Wynonna and Nicole scurried apart. In her haste, Nicole had pulled the trigger on the spray gun, getting a mist of fertiliser on Wynonna’s boots. Not her work boots, but her beloved Doc Martens. “Holy shit, Nicole!”

Waverly crossed her arms. “Let it go, Wynonna,” she said. “Now tell me. Why do you need to talk to Dolls?”

* * *

Wynonna and Nicole gave Waverly half-truths. Nicole had hit a wall with her investigation because the gangs have caught wind of her existence, and Dolls’s superiors are reluctant to send another officer, so they needed another way in. There was no mention of Willa.

Waverly ranted about the inefficiency of law enforcement and how numerous levels of government had basically abandoned rural Canada, before reaching a conclusion: “Wynonna and I will join the Revenants.”

Wynonna was loudly resistant to the idea, but somehow, Waverly had managed to get Nicole in the front passenger seat of her jeep, and with a still-protesting Wynonna in the back seat, they drove to Purgatory to find Dolls.

Nicole was on her phone as soon as they got cell service to arrange a meeting place. “Back entrance of the sheriff’s station,” she said. “He told us to park in the alleyway.”

“I didn’t know the station had a back entrance,” Waverly said.

“You clearly have not spent enough time there,” Wynonna said.

Waverly rolled her eyes. “Weird flex, but okay.”

When the sisters told him of their plan, the corner of Sergeant Dolls’s mouth twitched, like he was about to laugh. But his expression hardened again. He addressed Wynonna. “You said earlier that you’d be perfect for this,” he said. “What makes you think that?”

Wynonna knew this wasn’t a job interview. Dolls wasn’t asking for information that he didn’t already know. Wynonna smirked at him. “Don’t play dumb, Sarge. I know you’ve seen my file. I’m a troublemaker and everyone in Purgatory knows it. To them, it’s only about time that I join the Revenants.”

“You’re right.” Dolls started rifling through the files on his desk. “I’m sending you in.”

“By ‘you’, you mean plural, right?” Waverly piped up.

“Nope.” Dolls didn’t even look up from what he was doing. “Just Wynonna.”

“What?” Waverly was indignant. “I can be a Revenant, too!”

Dolls found what he was looking for and held it against his chest. He walked around the other side of the desk, closest to Waverly, and leaned against the desk. “Tell me about yourself,” he said.

“Are you  _ hitting  _ on my sister?” Wynonna joked.

“I have a history degree from the University of Calgary, and graduated with a record-high GPA. I speak four languages, including Latin. I’m good with a shotgun and I also did aikido at university,” Waverly enumerated.

Wynonna heard a murmur of admiration from behind her. She turned her head slightly and realised it was Nicole, who had been watching this whole thing play out like it was Shakespeare.

“All due respect, Waverly, but that is the exact opposite of what a gang like the Revenants would want,” Dolls said.

“Oh really? They’re not up for someone with a little culture?” Wynonna asked sarcastically. Truth be told, she liked that Dolls was also not keen on her little sister joining the Revenants. If she couldn’t convince Waverly, perhaps a Mountie could.

Dolls straightened up and approached Wynonna, handing her the folder he had been holding. He watched her open it. “That’s Carl. He works at the junkyard. Apparently he’s the person you need to talk to if you want to join the gang.”

Wynonna examined Carl’s picture. “He looks like an idiot.”

“He probably is,” Dolls said. “We’re gonna make a trip to the junkyard tomorrow. You talk to him, I’ll be your backup if things go south.” He seemed to soften at the sight of a dismayed Waverly. “You can stay here with Jeremy and Nicole and be our Plan B,” he told her. He then walked over to a safe in the far wall of the room. “Wynonna, come over here.” He entered the combination and opened the safe, which turned out to be full of weapons. 

Wynonna nearly salivated at the sight.

Dolls pulled out a compact, matte black pistol. “How do you like this?”

“I’m partial to a revolver,” Wynonna admitted.

Dolls, to her surprise, didn’t comment on her pickiness. He looked into the safe and reached in when he found what he was looking for. “I don’t even know why we’ve got this. Bit unconventional.” He showed Wynonna a revolver with a black barrel and a wooden grip. “Looks like a Model 19.”

Wynonna reached for it with barely contained enthusiasm. “I love it already,” she breathed.

* * *

After a phone call from Dolls, Jeremy arrived at the station, and the four of them spent a long time repeatedly going over the plan. At some point during their discussion, Nicole got up and opened the office that was her makeshift bedroom, several nights ago. She didn’t shut the door. She laid down on the couch and covered her face with her hat.

Wynonna guessed she probably felt redundant for this particular task. They couldn’t risk the Revenants seeing her just yet.

After the arduous planning, Dolls wrapped it up and sent the Earp sisters and a bleary Nicole on their way. As soon as Waverly turned on the ignition, Wynonna spoke: “Let’s go get some donuts.”

They stopped by the only bakery in Purgatory that sold donuts. “I’ll get them,” Waverly said. She turned to Nicole. “Do you have any preferences?”

“Uh, whatever you’ll have will be fine.” Nicole smiled at her. “Or you can surprise me.”

Waverly nodded and hopped out of the jeep, not even bothering to ask Wynonna. Neither of their favourites have changed anyway. She entered the bakery.

“Wynonna Earp!” a shrill woman’s voice exclaimed.

Wynonna’s head whipped around to see a woman with bright red hair and an impossibly tight purple dress. A colour combination that clashed, but she somehow pulled it off. “Mercedes.” Shooting Nicole a look, she got out of the jeep. “How are you?”

Mercedes caught Wynonna off guard by placing her hands on Wynonna’s shoulders, and leaning in to kiss both cheeks. “I’m fantastic!” she said, stepping backwards. “Just walking around town, you know, doing some window shopping.” She laughed, because both her and Wynonna knew there was nothing for Mercedes to window shop for around Purgatory, unless it was buildings she wanted to demolish because she liked the land they stood on. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in  _ years _ , gorgeous!”

“Well, I’m just getting used to a life without you, Mercedes,” Wynonna said in jest. “Apparently you’re planning to leave town.”

“If you ask me to stay, I’ll stay,” Mercedes said, very seriously. And then she threw her head back and laughed. “We should have drinks together sometime,” she suggested. “We have  _ plenty _ to catch up on. Anyway, I have to go. Beth wants her sourdough loaves. You know how she gets.” With a flamboyant wave, Mercedes entered the bakery.

“Who was that?” Nicole asked, as Wynonna clambered back in the jeep.

“Just a really rich person,” Wynonna said.

Minutes later, Waverly returned with a box, which she passed to Wynonna in the backseat. “Mercedes Gardner was in the bakery,” she told Wynonna.

“Yep, I saw her. She invited me for drinks.” Wynonna opened the box of donuts. “Strawberry jelly. Awesome.” She picked one up, not caring that her fingers were covered in powdered sugar. She bit into it and closed her eyes, moaning, almost obscenely. “This is literally the only thing worth coming for in Purgatory.”

Waverly took the box back from her, and offered it to Nicole. “Vanilla dip?”

“That’s perfect,” Nicole said, her voice soft with gratitude, like Waverly just offered her some fancy French pastry.

“Hold onto these,” Waverly told her, securing the box on Nicole’s lap. “I’m driving.”

Wynonna helped herself to a second jelly donut as Waverly sped out of Purgatory. “Oh man.” She hummed in satisfaction. “Gus is gonna be so mad when she finds out that we haven’t touched her rabbit stew.”

* * *

“I still think that this is bullshit.”

Wynonna looked up from fastening the gun to a holster. “What’s bullshit, baby girl?”

“We finally get to do something  _ exciting _ , and I’m here playing sidekick.” Waverly pouted.

Wynonna shrugged her parka on, smoothing it over so her holster was concealed as best as possible. “Sidekicks are usually smarter,” she said. “It’s only the idiots who walk in the line of fire.”

“Explains so much about Daddy,” Waverly said quietly.

Wynonna didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. “You’re the brains, I’m the brawn,” she said.

“Who’s the beauty?” Waverly asked.

“That’s me, too.” When her sister scowled, Wynonna laughed. “Fine, it’s both of us.”

Dolls entered the bullpen. “Earp. Are you ready?”

Waverly looked at Wynonna. “Break a leg,” she said.

“Not literally, I hope.”

Wynonna had never been in a vehicle as clean as Dolls’s. The SUV was spotless, and it even smelled clean. She doubted that Dolls had ever taken it through a drive-thru before. She shifted in her seat, restless, because as a driver, Dolls was also silent. He didn’t even turn the radio on. “This would be better with some music,” she suggested. “Help me get into the mindset.”

“We need to focus, Earp,” Dolls said.

The junkyard was on the southeast edge of Purgatory, which was known to be the flattest part of town. In the summer months, it was a huge tornado risk site. Not an ideal workplace. Dolls parked a couple of blocks away, out of sight.

“Remember the plan,” he told Wynonna.

“Trust me, it’s difficult to forget.” The plan was easy. Act well enough to convince Carl that she  _ needed  _ to be a Revenant. Wynonna need to play on her image as Purgatory’s lost cause. A former juvenile delinquent turned into unemployed homesteader who needed easy money doing dirty work. All Wynonna had to be was sincere enough. Desperate enough. It shouldn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. Jeremy and Dolls had even decided against wiring her with a listening device. She should be out of there in no time.

Wynonna entered the junkyard’s small reception. Behind the counter stood a sallow, weak-chinned man with stringy hair, wearing a black leather vest over a faded orange wool shirt. Wynonna walked up to him. “Hey,” she said. “You’re Carl, right?”

“Who’s asking?” he grunted.

“I’m Wynonna Earp,” she said.

Carl stared at her for a few seconds, before sneering. “You think I live under a rock or something? Of course I know who you are!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another week, another installment of the crazy hijinks of our heroines. Work started here, during the tail end of an awful heatwave (thanks, Australia!), but temperatures seem to be calming down. Although February is always the worst for NZ summers... Just when you think it's over, the heat sneaks up on you.
> 
> This week, we've got some sisterly feelings, some peacocking, and Waverly tries to teach Nicole how to butcher a chicken. I'm telling you this in advance because you might be vegetarian or a chicken lover. Anyway, enjoy!

For as long as Waverly could remember, Wynonna had always been as stubborn as a mule. But as she got older, Waverly recognised that she was probably the only person on the planet that got Wynonna to soften.

The morning after they got Nicole from the sheriff’s station, the sisters were at the pig pens.

“Why did you come with me to get Nicole?” Waverly asked. “You sent her away so easily.”

Wynonna’s gaze fell to the ground. “I hate to admit it, Waves, but I was wrong. I jumped to conclusions and assumed the worst.” She scuffed the toe of her boot against the dirt. “I should have listened to you first. You’re good at reading people. Besides, she’s nice to have around, isn’t she?”

“Yeah. She is,” Waverly agreed.

“Also, I wasn’t gonna let you perform a jailbreak without me.”

Waverly chuckled. “It wasn’t even a jailbreak. I could have handled it.”

“I’d be a shitty big sister if I didn’t help you anyway.” Because both of them were wearing gloves that were dirty and smelled horrible, Wynonna couldn’t touch her. Instead, she bumped her shoulder against Waverly’s. “You’re a hell of a lot smarter than me, baby girl. I need to learn to trust your instincts more.” She bit her lip. “Uh, and you were right. I did feel a bit jealous of Nicole.”

“You did?”

“Well, she’s a bit of a badass, isn’t she? Even before we knew about the whole getting chased by a criminal cult thing.” Wynonna shrugged. “It’s just been the two of us for so long, you know. I’ve never done well with other people coming into our lives.”

“Wynonna. You’ll always be my big sister and my favourite person,” Waverly told her. “That’ll never change.”

“Never?” Wynonna gave her puppy dog eyes.

“Ugh.” Waverly rolled her eyes, before bending down to tend to the younger pigs. “For someone who claims to be a lone wolf, you’re awfully needy.”

* * *

It had been nearly an hour and they hadn’t heard from Wynonna or Dolls.

Jeremy’s eyes were glued to a computer tracking the whereabouts of Dolls’s SUV. Waverly was sitting beside him, but her eyes were starting to hurt. Nicole was sitting across from them, her boots up on the desk.

“So,” Nicole said. “What four languages do you speak?”

“Guess,” Waverly challenged.

Nicole lowered her legs onto the floor and leaned forward. “English. French? You said Latin earlier, and…” She stroked her chin. “I’m gonna hazard a guess and say Italian? You’re a pig farmer and they love pork. Also, it’s basically Latin.”

“Spanish,” Waverly told her. “Not bad, though. Three out of four.”

“Why Spanish?” Nicole asked.

“My research focused a lot on Old West pioneers. There were a few intriguing ones from Mexico, and their journals were in Spanish. So I decided to learn it,” Waverly said.

“That easy?” Nicole straightened up in her seat, impressed.

Waverly decided to savour the attention. “You can say I have a thing for languages.”

“All right, they’re on the move,” Jeremy said. “And it looks like they’re heading back our way.” He pointed at the screen, where a flashing red dot was moving on a map. He watched the dot while Waverly and Nicole engaged in idle chatter. “Wait,” he said after a few minutes. “They’ve stopped.”

“Wynonna probably just got hungry,” Waverly said.

Another few minutes, and then the red dot stopped flashing and disappeared from the screen.

“Uh, Jeremy,” Waverly said. “What’s going on?”

Nicole, who was sitting on the other side, got up from her chair to look. “What do you mean? What happened?” She had her hand on the back of Waverly’s chair, and leaned forward so that her torso was pretty much brushing against the back of Waverly’s head.

“The tracker went offline,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah, I know that,” Nicole said. “What are possible reasons that it could have gone offline?”

“They might have stopped somewhere between buildings, so the signal might be fading. Or it might be an electrical failure on the car’s end,” Jeremy said. “Or they’re being followed and someone’s using a jammer.”

Waverly’s stomach dropped. She wasn’t planning for the worst to happen, but now she was certainly thinking it. What if the Revenants had followed them? What if they decided that instead of recruiting Wynonna, they were going to neutralise her instead? It was a possibility. No matter how much legal trouble Wynonna got in as a teenager, she was still the sheriff’s daughter. And Sheriff Ward Earp was a pain in Bobo Del Rey’s ass.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Waverly.” It was Nicole. “Your phone is ringing.”

Waverly jabbed the green button without even reading the screen. “Hello?”

“Hey, Waves.” It was Wynonna. “We’re just stopping for some food.”

“The tracker’s offline,” was all Waverly could say.

“Really? Hang on, I’ll ask Dolls.” Wynonna had a conversation with Dolls in the background for a few seconds. “Hey, you there? Dolls said it might have something to do with being in between two massive cable satellite dishes.”

Waverly covered the mouthpiece and turned to Jeremy. “Would cable dishes mess with the signal?” she asked.

“That’s probably it, actually,” Jeremy said.

Waverly removed her hand from the mouthpiece. “Just get back soon, all right?”

“Of course,” Wynonna said. “I was just asking if you wanted tofu stir fry.”

Waverly sighed. “You know I do.”

Twenty minutes later, Wynonna and Dolls walked through the bullpen doors. Wynonna triumphantly clutched a large paper bag that contained Purgatory’s finest—and only—Chinese food. “I hope you’re all starving,” she said, laying the food out on the table in the middle of the room. “Because I am.”

Jeremy shrunk down in his seat. “I’m vegan.”

“I have accounted for that,” Dolls said, which made Jeremy perk up.

Wynonna opened packages of disposable plates and cutleries. “Only the best compostable china for you, baby girl,” she told Waverly, winking.

Waverly watched as her sister and Dolls opened the various containers of food. She wanted to kick herself for being worried about Wynonna, but she also wanted to kick herself for not being able to say it out loud. She wanted to grab Wynonna by the shoulders and tell her that she never wanted her to put herself at risk again. Not without Waverly by her side. But Waverly knew that was too much. Their investigation had barely started.

Someone was pushing a plate into her hands. Waverly broke from her reverie and found herself looking into Nicole’s deep brown eyes. “Thanks,” she murmured.

“Are you okay?” Nicole asked.

“I think I’m just hungry,” Waverly lied. She joined the others at the table, who have formed some sort of haphazard queue that quickly devolved into a free-for-all for fragrant rice and a variety of stir fried meats and vegetables.

Wynonna recounted her time at the junkyard in between bites of her food. Apparently Carl had been more intrigued than suspicious that Wynonna was returning to her criminal past, with the intention of ‘levelling up’. “He said that he was gonna talk to some people, and to come back to the junkyard in three days,” she finished.

“This fit with the recruitment pattern Dolls and I figured out,” Nicole said. She was already on her second helping of sweet and sour pork over rice. Waverly didn’t fail to notice how particularly adept she was with chopsticks. “People reach out to a low-level lackey, and then they get in touch with a lieutenant, who puts the new recruit through the paces to see if they’re worthy of meeting Bobo.”

Wynonna snorted. “All that just to see a dude in a trailer park? And the Revenants have a proper pecking order now?”

“I don’t think Bobo lives in that trailer park anymore,” Dolls said. “Things have changed for him since the mine explosion. Intel says that he lives on a homestead now, too.”

“How’d he manage that?” Waverly asked.

“The mine was the town’s biggest source of income. When the mine was booming, the Revenants were pushed to the outskirts of town in that trailer park, and they were shunned,” Dolls explained. “But now that the mine is gone, and it took a good chunk of Purgatory with it, Bobo has clearly staked his claim. And the people of Purgatory would just have to go along with it. What choice do they have?”

“But Sheriff Nedley -” Waverly started. 

“Waverly,” Nicole interrupted her, but her voice was not at all aggressive. She was even solemn. “This is greater than Sheriff Nedley.”

It made sense, was Dolls and Nicole were saying, but it was still a bold assertion. With university and work on the homestead, she hadn’t spent much time in town for the last few years. But was it possible that Purgatory was now being held hostage by a criminal lowlife? And that nobody could do anything about it?

Wynonna joined in, more jovially than Nicole or Dolls. “That’s why we need to take ‘em down!” She reached over and lightly punched Nicole on the arm. “C’mon, Haughtshot. We should go to Shorty’s tonight, have a few drinks.” She looked over Nicole’s outfit, which never strayed from a combination of work pants, a button-down work shirt or a henley, and her boots, often with a wide-brimmed hat and a brightly coloured neck gaiter. “Don’t you have anything else to wear? Skinny jeans?” she asked, her nose wrinkled.

“I’m not going out for drinks, Wynonna,” Nicole said. “There are Revenants crawling all over Purgatory, and if one of them spots me at Shorty’s with you, there are going to be questions we can’t answer.”

“She’s right,” Dolls agreed. “Perhaps save your drinks for the homestead.”

“Cool, love to hear you being supportive, Sarge!” Wynonna cheered. “Why don’t you and Jeremy come along?”

“No, thank you,” Dolls said. He shot a look at Jeremy, who was about to open his mouth.

“Oh, that’s fine. I tried anyway.” Wynonna shrugged, before looking at Waverly. “Guess it’s gonna be you, me and Haught.”

Not that Waverly was complaining.

* * *

Despite the chaos that Nicole was bringing into their lives, Waverly had to admit that she was quite fond of her. Waverly was well-liked enough, but she didn’t have a lot of friends. That was par for the course for someone who was class valedictorian, dated the town douchebag, and had family that consisted of an alcoholic sheriff and a delinquent. She made friends in university, but most people who did a history degree were city kids planning to be writers and teachers and lawyers. They couldn’t even imagine living Waverly’s life on the homestead. Nicole was the first person in a very long time who she was comfortable calling a friend.

She liked how Nicole was game for homestead life. She thought that Nicole saw it as a break from the danger. She was already good with the plants, and didn’t recoil when Waverly had walked her through the pig pens. There were never good things to say about pig pens, no matter how clean they were. The Earps’ pigs were housed in three barns, interconnected by small outdoor passageways: one for the sows and their babies, one for medium-sized pigs, and one for any pig older than nine months old. They were filthier in the colder weather, when the pigs couldn’t be pastured, making the pens harder to clean. But Nicole didn’t complain once.

Nor did she complain when Waverly taught her how to pick up eggs from the chicken coops. A couple of the hens got rather aggressive with Nicole, but she took it in stride and managed to fill a tray of eggs before the angry hens managed to convince the rest of the coop to gang up on her.

This morning, there was a difficult job to be done. Waverly walked Nicole out to the chicken coop. “Today is Roger’s last morning with us,” she told Nicole on their way there. She was shivering. She didn’t know if it was from the cold—it was four degrees out and the sun was taking its time to rise—or from the thought of killing another animal. It hadn’t gotten easier. “Roger is one of Gus and Curtis’s roosters from their old house in town. He’s six years old now and we’ve got too many upcoming roosters with the male chicks that hatched, so he’s gotta go.”

Waverly pointed Roger out to Nicole, before picking him up. He wriggled in Waverly’s arms. “First, he’s gotta be relaxed,” she explained, stroking his feathers.

“They all gotta be relaxed, huh?” Unlike with the pig pens and the eggs, Nicole seemed to be approaching the task with trepidation. She was standing a metre and a half away from Waverly, her hands stuffed in her pants pockets.

“It’s essential,” Waverly said. She handed Roger to Nicole, who immediately started stroking his feathers. “All right, follow me.” They walked away from the chicken coops back to the house, in between the back door and the cabin. Waverly told Nicole to hold onto Roger while she went inside the house. She filled a metal bucket halfway with boiling water and filled it up the rest of the way with tap water, and then tucked a leather roll under her arm before leaving the house again. To her relief, Roger looked cosy in Nicole’s arms. “Ready?” She unfurled the leather roll, revealing a selection of knives.

“Those don’t look strong enough for decapitation,” Nicole said.

“We’re not decapitating.” Waverly proceeded to explain the procedure to Nicole, using the knives for ‘shutting off’ the rooster’s brain and then bleeding him out. They didn’t need another chicken anytime soon, so she wasn’t going to demonstrate. She was counting on Nicole being a fast learner.

Nicole managed the first part well enough, only going slightly pale as Roger’s body shook in her arms. The second part, however, was rougher. Despite Waverly’s reassurances that Roger now felt no pain, Nicole’s hand was unsteady. She had hit an artery at an awkward angle, yelping as blood sprayed all over her.

Waverly, feeling sorry for Nicole, took Roger and finished the job herself. To her credit, Nicole stayed and listened as Waverly showed her how to pluck and gut the rooster. Before Waverly started cleaning up, she told Nicole to get changed before the blood dried on her clothes. Nicole gladly obliged, disappearing into the cabin.

Waverly disposed of Roger’s innards and placed Roger himself in a cooler filled with ice water. She washed her hands and went to wait outside the cabin. Nicole hadn’t managed to fully close the door, and Waverly reached out to close it when the sight of Nicole stopped her in her tracks. 

Nicole already had a clean pair of pants on, but was still in her black, sleeveless undershirt, her bloodied clothes crumpled on the floor. Waverly stared at the way Nicole’s arm muscles flexed as she rummaged for a new shirt. Nicole pulled on one of her henleys, and wore her down jacket on top of it, before stepping back into her boots. She gathered her dirty clothes and approached the door.

Waverly pretty much jumped away from the door, pretending that she hadn’t been watching Nicole. “Hey,” she said, with an awkward giggle. “You wanna go soak those?”

“Might be a good idea,” Nicole said. She still looked rather ashen from her rooster mishap. She followed Waverly to the laundry shed and placed her clothes in a basin of tap water and prewash liquid.

“Are you okay?” Waverly asked.

“I think I will be,” Nicole said. “Though I think I’m much better off cleaning the pig pens.”

Waverly laughed.

A few days later, Nicole turned Roger into coq au vin. Wynonna, Gus and Doc all sang her praises. Waverly, on the other hand, settled for enjoying the rich aromas coming from the casserole pot on the dinner table, trying not to succumb to the urge to break her vegetarian diet. Especially since Nicole had also taken the time to make a delicately flavoured roast vegetable medley for her.

* * *

The  _ Purgatory Listener  _ had never been a shining beacon of journalistic integrity. The paper had spent many words and pages smearing the Earp family, starting when Sheriff Earp’s alcoholism went public. And then they were bold enough to have a cloying tribute to him when he died. Afterwards, they spent more words and pages attacking Wynonna.

“Jeez.” Nicole had flipped to a page in the binder she was perusing. It was a frontpage from 2005. The headline read:  _ Earp girl attempts to steal Mayor’s car _ . “They really hated her.”

“The more they hated her, the more trouble she got into. It was a vicious cycle,” Waverly said.

“What are we trying to do here, exactly?”

“I just found out that this town is possibly being controlled by people I have only ever seen as incompetent thugs,” Waverly said. “I’m trying to piece together a story on how that could have happened without anyone sticking up for Purgatory.” She was looking for what the  _ Listener  _ had written about Bobo Del Rey and the Revenants. She was hoping to get a clear narrative.

“You know court records are open to the public, right?” Nicole asked.

Waverly looked up from her binder. “They are?”

Nicole nodded. “Yeah. You can just walk in and ask to see them,” she said.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.” Waverly continued looking through the binder. She had found a handful of articles so far. It was all about petty crime. Nothing about drugs or brothels. And then her phone started ringing. Mortified, because they were in a  _ library _ , Waverly fished it out of her bag and answered the call as quickly as possible. “Hello?”

“Hey, sis.” It was Wynonna. “I’m using my one phone call.”

Waverly looked at the time. It was only three in the afternoon. “Are you in the drunk tank already?”

Nicole’s eyes widened. She touched Waverly’s wrist.

“Do I sound drunk to you?” Wynonna asked. She didn’t. “No, I did a thing. Come and get me. Do you know any lawyers?”

“I’ll be there in like, fifteen minutes,” Waverly said. She hung up on Wynonna and began closing the binders. “Let’s go, Nicole.”

After replacing the binders on the shelves, they practically ran out of the library and into a lanky young man with large glasses and greasy brown hair. “I’m  _ so  _ sorry!” Waverly said, rubbing her shoulder from where she collide with the man’s pointy elbow.

“Oh, hi, Waverly,” the young man droned. “It’s been a long time since I saw you.”

“Tucker!” Waverly flashed him a strained smile. Tucker Gardner was a year below her at school and was a downright creep. The last Waverly had heard of him, he had been dismissed from his university because of leaking nude photographs of his female classmates. It looked like he was back to slinking around Purgatory.

“How are you, Waverly?” Tucker asked. “I’ve missed our chats.”

“Yeah, the old academic decathlon days,” Waverly said awkwardly, more for Nicole’s benefit.

Nicole must have sensed her discomfort, because she stepped forward, effectively acting as a barrier between Waverly and Tucker. “Hey, Wynonna’s waiting for us,” she told Waverly, keeping her eyes on Tucker.

Tucker scowled at Nicole. “I don’t think we’ve met before,” he said.

“I’m a new farmhand,” Nicole said. “And you are?”

“Tucker Gardner.” He didn’t even try to shake Nicole’s hand. “I’ll see you around, Waverly.” He walked off at a leisurely pace, even looking back to see if Waverly was watching him leave.

“Ugh,” Waverly said. “I feel like I need a decontamination shower.”

“Just say the word and I’ll knock him on his ass,” Nicole said.

They continued walking down the road until they reached the station. The deputy behind the counter was Robin Jett. He looked worried upon seeing Waverly. “Uh, hi,” he stammered. “How can I help you today?”

“Wynonna was arrested,” Waverly said.

“I am  _ not  _ falling for that again, Waverly, I’m sorry,” Robin said.

“No, she was  _ actually  _ arrested.” Waverly scratched the back of her head. “Can I see Sheriff Nedley?”

Robin glanced at his computer screen. “Sheriff Nedley is busy in the interrogation room,” he read something on the screen, “with Wynonna. Oh.” He looked at Waverly. “Sorry. Do you just want to wait over there?” He pointed at the chairs lined up along the wall.

Waverly and Nicole sat down on the chairs.

“I saw a photo of you and Champ in the binders,” Nicole said. “They had cheerleaders at hockey games? Did they make you do it on skates?”

“Uh, no, we were confined to the bleachers.” Waverly winced, remembering the needlessly choreographed routines they thought up, often forgetting to consider the limited space they had.

“High school in Purgatory sounds  _ fantastic _ ,” Nicole said, chuckling.

“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm, Haught,” Waverly muttered.

Dolls, in his bomber jacket and combat boots, came storming into the station, barely casting a glance at Waverly and Nicole. “Where’s Sheriff Nedley?” he demanded, the mere sound of his voice causing Robin to slump down in his seat.

Robin mumbled an answer.

“Radio him over. Now.” Dolls didn’t even raise his voice, but the look in his eyes was enough to make Robin acquiesce.

Not even a minute later, Nedley emerged from a hallway. His face was ruddy and his hair was dishevelled. “Sergeant Dolls, what do you need?” he asked.

“You arrested Wynonna Earp,” Dolls said.

Nedley stood up to his full height, puffing his chest out. “Yes, I did.”

“You must release her immediately.”

“And  _ why  _ would I do that?” Nedley asked.

“Because she is a key witness in an ongoing investigation,” Dolls said.

Nedley put his hands on his hips. “What ongoing investigation may that be?”

Dolls looked around the station, before answering: “It’s classified. But I need Earp out.”

“What are you gonna do if I don’t, Sarge?” Nedley challenged.

“It’ll be good for you to remember, Sheriff, that I am here doing an investigation for the RCMP,” Dolls said.

Nedley laughed. “You’re pulling the fed card?”

“I  _ am _ pulling the fed card.”

Nedley ran a hand through his hair, making it messier than before. “Fine,” he said. “I’m going to  talk to her for another couple of minutes, and then I will let her go.”

Dolls seemed to back down. “Fine. Good,” he said. “I’ll wait for her here.” He sat down on the empty chair beside Waverly and watched Nedley walk back to the interrogation room. “Wynonna called you?” he asked Waverly.

Waverly nodded. “Do you know what she did?”

“Yeah, Rosita told me,” Dolls said. “I’ll explain later.”

Nicole leaned across Waverly to talk to Dolls in a lowered voice. “Waverly will take Wynonna in her jeep and get a headstart. After fifteen minutes, you and me follow them to the homestead. We’ll talk about it there,” she told him.

“Okay.”

It turned out that Wynonna had met with Malcolm Ramaker, one of Bobo Del Rey’s lieutenants. He told Wynonna to shoplift over-the-counter pain medication from the local pharmacy. Since Rosita was hypervigilant, she called the cops on Wynonna, but ultimately said that she wouldn’t be pressing charges. Wynonna followed Dolls’s instructions for if she got caught. When she got arrested, she used her phone call on Waverly. It had to look like she was just shoplifting.

“They wanted to see if you’ll tell the cops that they asked you to do it,” Nicole said.

“Well, they should’ve already known that I’ve never been a snitch and I’m not about to start,” Wynonna said. “They need to get me onto something bigger. I’m not settling for this low-level shit.”

Waverly didn’t like the determined tone in her sister’s voice. It sounded as if she was almost enjoying her return to crime. Waverly looked at Dolls and Nicole and wanted to lash out at how unfazed they looked. They didn’t understand what she was feeling. She had spent far too many years without Wynonna. She didn’t know if she could deal with that again.

* * *

Since they started working on the homestead, it had been routine that Waverly got up after Wynonna. Wynonna would start the work ten to twenty minutes before Waverly did, and she never whined about it. That was just the way things worked. When Waverly exited the house that morning, she saw Wynonna just standing idly, looking off into the distance, her work clothes still relatively clean.

Over the past few days, Waverly noticed that Wynonna was less and less interested in homestead work. She was even less inquisitive towards Nicole, and hardly said anything to rile up Sergeant Dolls. She focused on the Revenants like Waverly had never seen her focus before.

“What are you looking at?” Waverly asked her.

Wynonna nodded towards the vegetable patch. Nicole was kneeling down and inspecting their swiss chards with an uncharacteristic seriousness. “She was up before me,” she said. “Should we go make her some coffee? Toast?”

Waverly voiced a thought she had been having for a while: “Do you ever wonder where Nicole came from? I don’t think she’s from here.”

“The Ghost River Triangle? Definitely not,” Wynonna said.

“I don’t think she’s even from Alberta,” Waverly said. “She talks different. Her vowels are flatter.” She had a theory that Nicole was from further west, perhaps Vancouver. There hadn’t been a good time to ask about it yet.

Wynonna gave her a look. “That sounds really inappropriate.”

“It’s linguistics,” Waverly said.

“Oh good, because I thought it was a weird sex thing,” Wynonna quipped.

“Aren’t you curious at all?” Waverly asked. “She’s been with us for a couple of weeks now and we don’t know anything about her, except that she has a sketchy job.”

“Some people just don’t like talking about themselves, I guess,” Wynonna said. “From what I know of Nicole, she prefers listening.” She placed a hand on Waverly’s shoulder. “Maybe she’ll tell us, Waves. When all of this blows over.”

If it ever blew over.

Waverly sighed. “I’ll make coffee.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to another installment! I really appreciate your kudos and comments, guys, so keep 'em coming.
> 
> This week, the Wynhaught relationship gets tested, we learn a little bit more about Nicole, and we learn a whole lot more of recent Purgatory history...
> 
> Enjoy!

Nicole hated to say it, but she was bored. She hadn’t expected to take a backseat to Wynonna Earp, of all people. She understood why that needed to happen. There was most probably a target on her back. It was a greater risk sending her out there. But with Wynonna helping out, Nicole was essentially redundant until they had enough proof of the link between the Revenants and Pastor Clootie. And the Revenants were playing the long game with Wynonna. It had gotten to the point where Dolls himself was getting impatient.

“I miscalculated. The Revenants are in the process laundering most of their money. They’re not really doing any conspicuous illegal activity anymore,” he said. “They don’t need Wynonna to be one of their thugs.” 

While there were no concrete links to Pastor Clootie just yet, they had at least proven their hunch that the Revenants were the only reason why many of Purgatory’s surviving businesses were still running. This generous financing, Wynonna had discovered, was not because they wanted to reform their criminal ways, but came at a high price. Purgatory’s businesses essentially became a legitimate channel to move the Revenants’ illegitimate products around the Ghost River Triangle.

“Do you think we should go to another town? Find another group with links to Clootie?” Nicole offered.

Dolls sighed. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we’re already in too deep here,” he said. “If we pack up and move to another town, is Wynonna just gonna drop out of the Revenants? We have a duty to see her through.”

“ _ You _ have a duty to see her through,” Nicole said. “I only answer to my employers, not the Mounties.”

“Well, I hope you decide to stick around this job for a little while longer.” Dolls took a deep breath, seemingly readying himself to say something. “ _ Something  _ needs to come out of this.”

“What do you mean?”

“My superiors think I’m chasing dead ends. I’m one of the only few officers that still care about rural crime, Haught. A lot of the higher ups, in the RCMP and in the government, they’re content to just let people like Clootie have at it,” Dolls told her. “They think they’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m just saying it’s just you and me. And Jeremy and Wynonna,” Dolls said. “If we don’t get this right, then there won’t ever be another chance.” His dark eyes met Nicole’s, and they had lost their aloofness. “You’re good, Haught. Better than you think. We need to finish this job as a team.”

Nicole hated being bored, but she hated disappointing people more.

* * *

The pig pens had become Nicole and Wynonna’s preferred place to meet up to discuss the investigation. They could talk about most of it around Waverly. But the Willa factor, of course, had to remain a secret, even if it was becoming obvious that it was Wynonna’s first priority.

After a few successful operations, Wynonna had been accepted into the Revenant ranks, as a tag-along with a gun, whenever they transported illegal goods throughout their territory in the Ghost River Triangle. But she was still nowhere near meeting Bobo, who now lived on a homestead of his own, instead of the trailer park where most of the rest of the Revenants resided. Wynonna believed that only Bobo would give her the answers about what happened to Willa. Her single-mindedness was reaching a concerning level. She had also been coming home more irritable, which only enhanced her obsession.

Nicole leaned against the broom she was holding. “I don’t want you to lose sight of why you’re there, Wynonna,” she said. “I don’t want you to compromise the operation just because you’re focused on something else.”

“I know, I know, we gotta find that link between Bobo and your cult pastor,” Wynonna said.

“That needs to be your first priority,” Nicole said.

Wynonna took a step towards Nicole, her posture shifting to defensive—shoulders tensed, jaw high. “What makes you think it isn’t?”

Nicole shrugged. She kept her eyes on the floor and continued sweeping the pig pen. “Look, I said I’d help you get the chance to find Willa. But you have to help me and Dolls, too,” she said. “We need to move along. You don’t have to meet Bobo directly, Wynonna. You can snoop around other places, too.”

“Anything from Bobo would help your case,” Wynonna said.

“I’m starting to think this is less about getting your peace of mind and more about revenge.”

At this, Wynonna’s eyes flashed. She closed the distance between her and Nicole, and knocked the broom out of Nicole’s hands. “What the fuck are you trying to say here, Haught?” she asked, her voice low and menacing. “Spit it out. Have you and Dolls been talking about me?”

Up close like this, Nicole realised how exhausted Wynonna looked. Even under the poor halogen lighting of the pig pen, Wynonna was pale and developing bags under her eyes. Her hair, normally styled to be wild and free, was unkempt in a less intentional sort of way. She was out most nights, doing work for the Revenants, and came back to the homestead the following morning, often only getting a catnap before she had to work on the land. Nicole guessed that she only kept working so that Gus wouldn’t get suspicious.

“Have you told Dolls about my plan to find Willa? Because that was supposed to be between you and me!” Wynonna’s hand shot out to clutch the front of Nicole’s shirt. She pulled Nicole closer. “Answer me,” she growled.

Nicole’s patience rapidly wore thin. It wasn’t the prospect of bodily harm that was doing it. It was the fact that she was already  _ lying  _ to the police about Wynonna, and Wynonna was now here, standing in the middle of a pig pen, holding her by the shirt in an attempt to remind her what was  _ supposed  _ to be more important. She tried to speak as evenly as possible. “Earp, you’re my friend. But I don’t work for you.” It was a vague answer, only meant to provoke Wynonna.

Wynonna didn’t relinquish her grip. “Friend? I only kept you around because I thought you’d be useful,” she spat. “You can fuck right off, Haught. You don’t get to talk to me about my revenge mission. Come back to me when your family has been destroyed. Come back when you’ve lost your sister.”

“Lost a sister?”

Nicole turned her head and saw Waverly standing in the doorway.

“What’s going on here? Wynonna, why are you talking about Willa?” Waverly asked.

Wynonna looked at Waverly, and then looked back at Nicole. “Fuck this,” she muttered. She let go of Nicole and pushed her away for good measure. And then she made a beeline for the doorway, dodging Waverly as she stomped off outside.

Nicole regained her balance after stumbling backwards. She noticed that Waverly was still standing in the doorway.

“You’re going to tell me what’s going on,” she told Nicole. Her eyes, like Wynonna’s, were flashing dangerously, making the family resemblance more pronounced. “Because I know I’m not getting any answers from her.”

Nicole, not expecting that she would be facing at the wrath of not one, but  _ two _ , Earps in one morning, gulped.

* * *

She had to tell Waverly. It was unfair, how they kept her in the dark. Plus, Nicole knew she wasn’t getting out of that pig pen until she had said enough. Whatever  _ enough  _ was, that was up to Waverly. And when she had enough, she turned on her heel and walked out of the barn, presumably to find Wynonna.

Nicole finished cleaning the pig pen. Both of the women had left the ATV for her outside. She got on it and roamed the property, checking the fencing like Wynonna had taught her to. The homestead was a good size. Just under ten hectares, sufficiently fertile yet underutilised. When things were a bit quieter, she planned to talk to the sisters about the land.

She rode the ATV back to the house. She saw Wynonna and Waverly through the kitchen window. They were having a heated conversation. Nicole didn’t bother listening in. There were eggs that needed collecting, and the orchard and the vegetable patch needed tending to. She took the ATV around the land on the other side of the house, where they grew the grain for the animals. The winter crop was coming in nicely.

Eventually, she ran out of tasks. She headed back to the cabin. She changed into sweatpants and pulled her knit sweater over her undershirt. She hung up her work clothes outside to use for later in the afternoon. She opened the windows of the cabin, letting the frigid air in, and then lay back on the bed, on top of the covers. She had worked more than she usually did this morning. Perhaps she could take a quick nap before lunch.

The cabin door creaked open, accompanied by a heavier rush of cold air. This prompted Nicole to sit up in bed, expecting to see an angry Wynonna.

It was an angrier Waverly. But maybe angry wasn’t the right word. Waverly was sad. Upset. Frustrated. She closed the door behind her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Wynonna didn’t want you to get your hopes up,” Nicole said.

Waverly plopped down on the bed by Nicole’s feet. She buried her face in her hands. “That’s what she told me. She’s always trying to protect me from the wrong things.” She raised her head, and Nicole realised that her face was streaked with tears. “Actually,” she sniffed, “she says it’s protecting me, but it’s just her not telling me things because she doesn’t want to.”

“I’m sure she has her reasons -” Nicole began.

“Don’t take her side!” Waverly swiped at her tears. “All my life it’s been like this. I’m so sick of people not telling me things. They say it’s because I don’t need to know them, or because I might get my feelings hurt,” she sobbed. “But it feels like they don’t tell me things because I don’t deserve the truth.”

“That’s rough, Waverly,” Nicole said. She reached in her pack for her pouch of tissues and handed it to Waverly.

Waverly murmured a thanks. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and then blew her nose. She looked up at Nicole. “Last year, I found out that Ward Earp wasn’t my real father. My mama had an affair,” she said. “Everyone but me knew.”

“Shit.”

“Wynonna said she didn’t know either, but surely she had to have some idea,” Waverly said. “Daddy never loved me like he loved Willa or Wynonna. I always thought something was wrong with me.”

Nicole couldn’t bear seeing Waverly this way, all broken and bitter. “There is  _ nothing  _ wrong with you,” she said. She took one of Waverly’s hands in both of hers. “You were a kid. There’s nothing you could’ve done that meant you deserved how he treated you. How anyone treated you.”

“I didn’t even like Willa.” Waverly lightly kicked at the carpet. “Daddy mostly pretended I didn’t exist, unless I had made a mess that he had to clean up. But Willa was mean and nasty to me. That’s mostly what I remember of those years. I’m sorry, but I don’t even know why Wynonna wants her back. I don’t have any good memories of her.”

Nicole let go of Waverly’s hands and started rubbing her back, the space between her shoulder blades. “I guess Wynonna loves both of you, and she wants her family back,” she said. Wynonna was a reckless hothead who could end up compromising a significant bust for the Mounties, but Nicole couldn't fault her dedication to her sisters.

Waverly tossed the used tissue in the bin. She turned her face so that she was making eye contact with Nicole. She hadn’t shrunk away from Nicole’s touch. If anything, she had slightly leaned into it. “Enough about my crazy family,” she said. “Distract me. Tell me about yours.”

“Uh.” Nicole had fallen out of the habit of talking about her family. It wasn’t ideal in her line of work. But as soon as she looked into Waverly’s eyes, the words tumbled out of her mouth: “I grew up on Vancouver Island, just outside Victoria. My family owned a vineyard. Well, it was mostly a vineyard, but we had fruits and vegetables as well.”

“That explains why you’re so good with the plants,” Waverly said.

Nicole shrugged bashfully. “I’m all right with them.”

“So your family made wine?” Waverly prompted.

“Yup. It’s the family business,” Nicole said. “My parents, they sent me to private schools, and they had me working on the vineyard in the summer. They wanted me to follow in their footsteps and take over the vineyard. I even did two years of university, studying biology and environmental studies.”

“Then what happened?”

Nicole took a deep breath. “Then I told them I didn’t want the life they wanted for me,” she told Waverly. “I dropped out of university, packed a bag, took the next ferry to the mainland and managed to convince some hipster bistro in Vancouver to hire me. Worked my way up from bussing tables to sommelier in a few months.” Nicole grew up around money, and never wanted for nothing, but she was scrappy when she had to be.

“I thought you needed like, a certificate to be a sommelier,” Waverly said.

“That place couldn’t afford to pay a sommelier with a certificate, so they had no choice but to get me to do it. Shit, I was just twenty, then. I got a room in this shitty house in Richmond, near the airport. Pretty sure it was condemned. I had like, six other roommates. I had never been away from home before,” Nicole said, chuckling as she reminisced. It was only a few years ago, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Her memories felt like they belonged to a different person.

This made Waverly chuckle, too. “You’re a surprise, Nicole Haught,” she said. “When I first met you, I thought you had seen everything. And it turns out, you have. But not in the way that I expected.”

Nicole smiled at her. “Is that a good or bad thing?” she asked.

Waverly leaned towards Nicole, so that Nicole’s arm was around her shoulder, and her head was in the crook of Nicole’s neck. “It’s a great thing.”

* * *

The inevitable happened.

Nicole went out to the edges of the property to check her messages. She had received an email from her employer. It informed her that her contract for this current case had run its course, and she was now free to take on a new contract on another case. The RCMP had officially cut her off. She saw it coming; she could no longer get away with just sitting around.

She texted Dolls about it and he called her straight away.

“I’m sorry, Nicole,” he said. “It was out of my hands. Just know that we wouldn’t have gotten here without you.” He suggested that Nicole lay low for a while.

“I want to finish this,” Nicole said.

“I can’t pay you,” Dolls said.

“That won’t be a problem,” Nicole said. Her employer had given her two weeks’ paid leave, as a small reprieve for the months she had spent on this particular case. And if she failed to return to Calgary to take on a new case in two weeks, there was always her trust fund. At least her parents didn’t deprive her of that.

There was one thing in this particular case that didn’t add up, and everyone else had been too busy watching Wynonna with the Revenants to go back to it.

Waverly was out in town, and there was no way Nicole was going to ask Wynonna to borrow her truck. Luckily, Gus was around, and was happy to lend Nicole her old hatchback. Nicole drove to the only pharmacy in Purgatory. There was only one other car parked in the customer’s parking lot. When Nicole entered, she saw Rosita talking to an old lady about calcium supplements. The old lady eventually thanked her and left, and Rosita spotted Nicole. She groaned and rolled her eyes, making her way back behind the counter.

“This is the most interaction I’ve had with the cops since I ditched the Revenants,” she said.

“I’m not a cop,” Nicole said. “I’m just Nicole.”

“Just Nicole?” Rosita scoffed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“There’s just something that’s been nagging at me.” Nicole walked up to the counter, so that she and Rosita were face to face. “After the mine explosion, a lot of the businesses shut down because they lost a lot of customers. They died, or their families moved away. Most of the businesses that did survive, we’re finding that they have links with the Revenants. But you,” Nicole watched as Rosita began to shift uncomfortably, “you took over the pharmacy  _ after  _ quitting the Revenants. How did you do that? And why didn’t they stop you?” She let the unasked question hang in the air: did they even let Rosita quit in the first place?

Rosita regained her composure, as if she had never lost it. This woman had spent years dealing with the worst of Purgatory; she wasn’t shaken by Nicole. “You don’t belong here, Haught, so don’t go talking like you know what this town is about,” she said.

“I’m not saying I know what this town is about,” Nicole said. “I’m just saying I know the people who cook up drugs for gangs can’t usually leave them unscathed.”

“I’ve got people on my side,” Rosita said.

“Who?”

“If I tell you, will I never see you again?” Rosita asked.

“If you tell me, I will try my utmost not to bother you,” Nicole responded.

Rosita walked around the counter to the front of the shop. She locked the doors and flipped the sign to close. “Come with me,” she said, leading Nicole around the back of the counter and into the office behind it.

* * *

Nicole hadn’t bothered denying her attraction to Waverly from the moment they met. She had met plenty of smart people, but Waverly was something else. She was properly curious, and intelligent, and, endearingly, her brain worked faster than her mouth. At the same time, Waverly was loyal and caring. She accepted people easily, like how she was practically best friends with Jeremy, despite their first meeting involving Jeremy pointing a gun at her. Waverly Earp was a genuinely  _ good  _ person who was always prepared to good things, and that was what Nicole liked most about her.

She and Waverly had become friends quickly, but Nicole had no hopes for it going further. She didn’t know how long she had left in Purgatory. If they never close the case, she wouldn’t be able to stay. That seemed more and more likely each day that passed. Soon enough, she’d have to get far away from the Ghost River Triangle. She didn’t want to know how Waverly felt about her because they were probably never meant to be.

But at the moment, she indulged herself by keeping Waverly company on the homestead. Wynonna was talking to neither one of them, and Gus had given up on figuring out what was going on. The older woman had retired for the evening, leaving Waverly and Nicole seated at the dining table, nursing cups of tea. 

“I found out something today. About Rosita,” Nicole told Waverly. She didn’t have anyone else to tell, and Waverly appreciated learning information about the case, as her fight with Wynonna meant that she was getting left out more often.

Waverly’s eyes widened. “Please don’t tell me she’s still part of the Revenants.” Nicole was aware that Waverly and Rosita were friends, much to Wynonna’s annoyance.

“Oh no, she’s fine,” Nicole said. “Waverly, have you heard of the Perleys?”

“Sure.” Waverly nodded. “One of the original Purgatory families. Blacksmiths for generations, and then it fell out of fashion, so they moved into middle class jobs. Why?”

Nicole relayed what Rosita had told her. “After the mine exploded, Rosita wanted out of the Revenants. She went to Sheriff Nedley, who directed her to Mattie Perley,” she said.

“She works in the city. For a pharmaceutical company,” Waverly said.

“And her twin, Gretta, is a nurse at the medical centre,” Nicole said. “Anyway, the three of them decided to buy the pharmacy together. Rosita was in charge of the day-to-day running, and the twins handle the finances and occasionally consult on inventory. They’re just discreet about it.”

“And nobody messes with the Perleys. Not even Bobo Del Rey. Their family has a reputation,” Waverly said vaguely.

“Right,” Nicole said, pretending that she knew what Waverly was talking about. All she knew was that there were some families that the Revenants didn’t touch. The Nedleys, the Earps, the Gardners, and the Perleys. Bobo Del Rey must have his reasons, but Nicole hadn’t bothered looking into them.

“So Rosita’s clean.” Waverly’s shoulders relaxed.

“She is,” Nicole said. “You understand what this means, don’t you? The town doesn’t have to be reliant on Revenant money. The people of Purgatory can work together.” Her time on the homestead, not pretending to be someone else, was resetting the way her mind worked. She had some ideas she wanted to share.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Nicole ran a hand through her hair. “Because I know how much you care about this town, Waverly. I know you must be feeling antsy right now, wondering how you can contribute. You can get people together,” she said.

“Are you suggesting I lead a revolution against the Revenants?” Waverly asked.

“Yeah, I guess.” Nicole shrugged. “Something like that.”

“Why  _ me _ ?”

“Because you’re smart and brave and if anyone is going to convince the people of Purgatory, it’s gonna be you,” Nicole said.

Waverly sipped her tea, then put her cup down, staring out the window. “You know, all my life I dreamed of leaving this place,” she said. “I have a university degree, for crying out loud. But Wynonna came back and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. She’d never make it here without me.”

“Because of the homestead.”

“No.” Waverly was shaking her head. “Wynonna has a  _ complicated  _ relationship with Purgatory. She wants to stay and take care of this land, but the people in town don’t like her much, as you know.”

“It’s not because of your dad, is it?” The sisters mentioned their father now and then, but they hadn’t told the full story. Nonetheless, it was established that Ward Earp was an efficient sheriff but a nonchalant father, but got worse at both jobs once his wife left him. Nicole knew she could find out more by asking around, or viewing the files at the sheriff’s station, but she wanted to hear it from the sisters. They just hadn’t had the time.

“It’s kind of because of him,” Waverly said. “Do you know how he died?”

Nicole shook her head.

Waverly hesitated.

“You don’t have to tell me if you’re not comfortable,” Nicole told her.

“Ah, I might as well tell you, since you’ve gone all this time without hearing from somebody else,” Waverly said. She took a deep breath to compose herself, before finally saying: “When I was six years old, Bobo Del Rey and his men stormed the homestead. They were all drunk, and they were asking for Daddy. I don’t remember what for. But it started to turn violent, and Daddy was drunk too. I remember getting scared and crying, and Willa was telling me to shut up. But Wynonna somehow managed to get a hold of Daddy’s gun and she aimed it at Bobo.”

Nicole thought she knew where this was going, but what came next just about broke her heart.

“She shot Daddy instead.”

“Shit.”

Waverly nodded. “Daddy was the only person keeping the Revenants in check. That’s why they ended up at the trailer park,” she said. “When he died, the Revenants stayed away for a bit for some reason, and then when I was about ten, that’s when their profile started getting bigger again. Sheriff Nedley kept us safe for the most part, but he couldn’t stop the meth trade.”

“I’m sorry, Waverly,” Nicole said quietly. She resolved to be more understanding of Wynonna.

“You accused Wynonna of going on a revenge mission, and you’re probably right,” Waverly said. “But I think it’s also about her redemption as well. She thinks that if she takes Bobo down, she’s going to save Purgatory, and she’ll finally earn her right to stay here.”

“Do you like what she’s done so far?”

“No, but that’s her thing,” Waverly said. “Let Wynonna be the hero. I’ll help her in my own way.” There was a different spark in her eye. “Will you help me, Nicole?”

“Of course.” At this point, Nicole would do anything for Waverly Earp.

* * *

The jostling of a key in a lock woke Nicole up. She sat up in bed, cursing herself for not having a firearm on her. The lock clicked as Nicole scanned the dark room, searching quickly for any potential weapons.

The door swung open and then the lights came on. It was Wynonna, her hand on the light switch, still fully dressed from yet another night adventure. She nudged the door closed with her foot. She approached the bed and aimed her revolver at Nicole.

Nicole froze.

“Get up, Haught.” Wynonna’s voice was gravelly. “You owe me a fucking explanation.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the late update! I had a couple of late nights at work this week so I completely forgot to upload this chapter when I got home.
> 
> This week: No Waverly, but shit is getting real...
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Crime,  _ real  _ crime, had a way of eating at your soul. That was what Wynonna discovered.

She didn’t expect that. As a teenager, Wynonna fancied herself as an outlaw, the wild prairies of Purgatory as her playground. Of course, she never moved past shoplifting and vandalism, and the occasional grand theft auto. When she was kid, those activities gave her a rush. Sure, she paid like hell for them afterwards, being bounced around from juvie to group home and back, but she couldn’t say that she didn’t have fun.

What she was doing with the Revenants, however, was the opposite of fun. Wynonna realised that she was not made for the criminal life. But she was too far in to back out and quit. The Revenants had welcomed her eagerly. Almost too eagerly. Wynonna would have preferred it if they weren’t too comfortable taking her places. Not that they had been taking her anywhere that led to Pastor Clootie. Or to Willa.

But she was a woman on a mission. And finally, there was a hint of a reward.

Levi had no business being a Revenant, let alone one who ranked as high as he did. He was elitist, soft and prone to complaining. But Wynonna could see the slyness in him. He deceived people easily. Still, he had taken a liking to Wynonna and during one of their conversations, let it slip that Bobo was entertaining “a very important benefactor”.

Wynonna managed to get herself onto the homestead that Bobo had expropriated from someone. There were only a few Revenants on site, and they were already halfway drunk when she got there, so she was confident she could make her escape when she needed to.

The house on this homestead was similar to the ones on the Earp homestead, if not slightly bigger and newer, so Wynonna found her way around easily. Bobo was a lowlife, but he had manners. If this benefactor was as important as Levi boasted, then Bobo would make use of his dining room.

She peered through the kitchen window, which provided a view of the dinner table. Bobo was sipping wine, decidedly  _ not  _ sitting at the head of the table, but on the right hand-side of his guest of honour. The guest in question was a man, perhaps in his late sixties or early seventies, with thinning white hair and a gaunt complexion.

“Pastor Clootie,” Wynonna breathed. She had to get inside the house.

She stepped back from the window and inspected the structure of the house. She had climbed into the upstairs windows of the Earp house many times. If this house was similar, then Wynonna should be able to do the same. She went around the front of the house. The Revenants were having a bonfire just a few metres away from the porch. Wynonna wondered if she was able to climb up from the porch without any of them noticing. All of them were facing away from the house, roaring with laughter as they repeatedly clinked beer bottles.

Wynonna pulled the hair tie around her wrist and put her hair into a bun. She hopped up on the porch’s banister and shimmied her way up a column. Finally, she managed to get on the roof of the house. It was dark, and she couldn’t exactly see where she was going, so she crawled around, careful not to dislodge any loose shingles. She reached the dormer that she assumed led to the attic and looked inside. It was empty. She pried the window open easily; she had opened far more complicated windows before. As soon as her feet landed softly on the attic floor, she took a moment to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Still got it, Earp,” she muttered.

The attic door was open, exposing the landing and the stairs below. Wynonna hoped that none of those steps were creaky. As lightly as her boots would allow, she slowly inched her way down the stairs, until she reached a point where she was still out of sight, but the voices from the dining room could be heard clearly. She crouched down and listened.

Bobo was chuckling self-deprecatingly. This was a new sound for him, if he was still the menace that Wynonna knew from childhood. “We’ve tried our best to diversity, but we can only profit so much from Purgatory, Pastor,” he said. “Our market hasn’t been the same, since, you know, the explosion.”

“I understand. This is what happens to a town without men.” Clootie’s voice was a slow, slightly nasally drone. “Have you not considered moving on elsewhere? I heard there are plenty of opportunities outside the Ghost River Triangle.”

“Tempting as it is, I don’t believe clout is something that can be easily transferred,” Bobo said. There was a rustle, which Wynonna took as Bobo shifting in his seat. “Pastor,” he cleared his throat, “my people and I have done good work for you.”

“You have,” Clootie agreed, albeit half-heartedly.

“If I could be so bold as to ask you for another investment,” Bobo said.

Clootie made a sound similar to a sneer. “Mr Del Rey,” he said. “I hope you understand how much I’ve compromised myself to  _ invest _ in your operation. I’m not in a good position to offer financial assistance at the moment.”

Bobo’s next words dropped their refined veneer: “But the guys from Bragg Creek -”

“You are not winning me over by revealing that you speak about me behind my back, Mr Del Rey!” Clootie snapped. Wynonna listened as he took an exaggerated breath. “Perhaps you can help me out,” he said. “I have reason to believe that the police are after me and my congregation.” He left the statement hanging. 

As expected, Bobo prompted him: “How?”

“Just after Thanksgiving, I sent one of my people to collect  _ dividends  _ from the good folk of Cochrane. They were a bit behind, you see. They arranged to meet five kilometres southwest of Waiparous,” Clootie began. “My man didn’t return when he said he would, so I sent more people after him. They found him in the medical centre in Waiparous. He’d been knocked unconscious while stopping at the gas station there.”

“The people from Cochrane?” Bobo spoke Wynonna’s assumption out loud.

Wynonna inched forward on the step she was sitting on.

“No. He didn’t even get to the meeting place,” Clootie told him. “I had my people get in touch with Cochrane. They said that they had met someone who said they were one of mine, and tried to get the payment off of them. They got suspicious, and rightly so, but this intruder had somehow incapacitated them and took off with the money. They said that she was in possession of a weapon.” There was a pause. “Mr Del Rey, do you believe in coincidences?”

“Depends,” was Bobo’s response.

“In our town, there was a newcomer who ended up asking way too many questions. I wanted her to come into our fold, join the congregation, but she kept refusing,” Clootie said. “She worked at the recycling plant. Apparently, her last day of work was the day before I sent that man to Waiparous.”

Wynonna swore her heart had stopped.

“You reckon she was an undercover cop?” Bobo asked.

“I don’t know,” Clootie said. His voice lowered to a menacing growl, and Wynonna had to strain to hear his next words: “But somewhere out there, a redheaded  _ bitch  _ has my money.”

* * *

That was how Wynonna ended up in the cabin in the middle of the night, standing over Nicole’s bed, aiming a gun at her chest.

“Get up, Haught,” she said. “You owe me a fucking explanation.” 

Not lowering the gun, Wynonna interrogated Nicole about what happened in Waiparous with Clootie’s men and the gang members from Cochrane. No matter what words were previously exchanged between her and Nicole, she wanted the full story. She wanted to help her. Clootie was out for blood. Nicole was hiding out in  _ her _ homestead, possibly with money that she had  _ stolen  _ from the biggest crime financier of the Ghost River Triangle. Wynonna knew the stakes were high to begin with, but she didn’t expect them to be  _ this  _ high.

“The car that you took, was that the same car that you abandoned on the highway before you ended up here?” Wynonna asked.

“No,” Nicole said. “I met an associate in a different town. She arranged a different car for me and we ditched that one there.”

“And is the money with her as well?”

Nicole nodded.

“How much money was it?”

“A hundred grand,” Nicole answered.

Wynonna lowered the gun, noting at how much Nicole relaxed when she did. Yet Wynonna had no doubt that Nicole could have disarmed her easily. She  _ did  _ take down three armed men when the situation called for it. “I think Dolls needs to know,” she said, in the most even voice she could muster. “He’s the only one who can help you.”

Nicole shook her head vehemently. “No. You can’t tell Dolls,” she said. “He’d get pissed that I was keeping things secret.”

“Yeah, I  _ totally _ want to know what that guy would look like if he found out that you were purposely keeping stuff from him.” Wynonna shook her head. “You stole from a goddamn psychopath, Nicole! I don’t like the cops but even I know that Dolls is your best chance right now.”

“I only took the money for evidence! I was going to tell Dolls earlier but you told me you wanted to find Willa,” Nicole said. “If I told him about the money, it would be game over. I needed to delay the investigation. I admit, it dragged on for longer than I was planning it to, but -”

Wynonna was taken aback. “You were doing this for me?”

“Once you told me that Willa had gotten mixed up with the Revenants, I knew you weren’t going to be able to find her without help from actual law enforcement,” Nicole said.

“Wait, so you’re saying you were practically sabotaging a police investigation just to help  _ me _ ?”

“It’s not unfixable. Someone else from the Mounties has the money,” Nicole confessed. “I’ve been in touch with her, told her I needed to be safe before she did anything. In the time it takes to indict someone like Clootie, he could’ve already sent someone to eliminate me. She promised to hold onto it until I gave her the all clear.”

“You were already working with the cops? Before Dolls?” Wynonna asked. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She asked for answers but Nicole was providing even more brand new information. It was dizzying.

“Staff Sergeant Eliza Shapiro,” Nicole said. “You can look her up.”

Wynonna made a mental note to do that the next time she had internet. “Well, we can tell Dolls, and you can contact this Shapiro person. I saw Clootie and Bobo Del Rey with my own eyes,” Wynonna said. “That’s enough evidence to build a case, don’t you think?”

Nicole’s eyes went wide. “We’re not telling Dolls at all,” she said. “Come on, Wynonna. He’d get at me for wasting police resources. If he doesn’t charge me with obstruction, he’d definitely get me fired from my job.”

Wynonna raised a challenging eyebrow. “You really like your job that much?” 

“I don’t know what else I want to do.”

From what Wynonna had seen of Nicole on the homestead, it seemed like Nicole would do anything  _ but  _ her actual job.

“Wynonna.” The blood had drained from Nicole’s face, making her skin look stark compared to her hair. “Wynonna, we can use this. I can use this to help you with Willa.”

* * *

The first phase of their plan involved Wynonna finding the opportunity to get a private audience with Bobo Del Rey. She nagged every Revenant lieutenant she knew. She didn’t give any specifics. Those weren’t needed. Everyone who had lived in Purgatory for the last twenty years was aware about Bobo Del Rey’s part in the tragic tale of Ward Earp and his three daughters. It had evolved into a folktale, much to Wynonna’s chagrin.

But none of the lieutenants relented.

One afternoon, Wynonna received a message about a job. The meeting place was the delivery lot behind the local grocery store. Wynonna had done jobs there before, emptying hijacked Amazon delivery trucks of their goods. That was one of the Revenant errands that she hated the least.

She made her way to the lot. There was no one in sight, but she figured that she was early.

And then a shiny black Chrysler skidded into the lot. When it approached Wynonna, it stopped and dimmed its headlights.

“What the fuck?” Wynonna whispered, shielding her eyes.

The Chrysler’s passenger doors opened, and a tall man with a greying beard and a fur coat emerged. Bobo Del Rey. He threw his hands up in a welcome as he walked to Wynonna. “Wynonna Earp!” He said her name slowly, like he was savouring it. “I’ve heard that you were  _ desperate  _ to see me.”

“Bobo.”

Bobo clutched at his chest. “Oh, Wynonna, you wound me! How long has it been? Fifteen? Sixteen years?” He smirked. “And all you can say to me is my name?”

“To be honest, you deserve less,” Wynonna said. The last time she saw Bobo, she was thirteen years old and kneeling over her daddy, who was bleeding out on the porch. Bobo just sneered at her while dragging Willa away in his truck.

“Ouch. Baby sister has better manners,” Bobo said.

Wynonna felt like a flame was lit under her. “Don’t talk about Waverly,” she growled. She tried to calm herself down. She knew Bobo was trying to play her like a fiddle. She cleared her throat. “I’ve been hearing things. You’re running out of money.” She watched Bobo’s reaction changed from smug to intrigued. “That you’re starting to piss off some very important people.”

“Who’s been talking?” Bobo barked.

“I’m not a snitch,” Wynonna said. “But I can help you.”

“I don’t want none of your daddy’s money,” Bobo said.

“You know my daddy didn't have money. You want Pastor Clootie’s, don’t you? Yeah, I heard you were kissing his ass the other night, but he wasn’t giving you anything back. Must suck,” Wynonna said.

“I was not kissing his -”

“That’s besides the point, Bobo!” Wynonna cut him off. “I have something Pastor Clootie wants. I can give it to you. But I want something in return.”

* * *

Waverly was still giving her the silent treatment. Not being able to talk to Waverly pained Wynonna, but she was too prideful to take the initiative to make it right. Besides, what she was about to do was going to elicit a much worse reaction, for sure. She would ask for forgiveness later.

After dinner was finished and everyone else had settled in for the night, Wynonna sat in her truck. They were used to her leaving the house by now, so nobody was going to ask any questions. She watched the time on her phone. At ten PM sharp, Nicole climbed into the front passenger seat.

Wynonna wordlessly handed her a flask.

Nicole screwed the flask open and took a hearty gulp. “Ready?” she asked Wynonna, grimacing from the burn of the whiskey.

“I never thought I’d say this, but this is fucking crazy,” Wynonna said.

“Let’s get outta here before you get cold feet, then.”

They drove through Purgatory on their way to Bobo’s homestead. It had never been a vibrant town, but it looked especially dead to Wynonna. The streetlight seemed hazy, and though most of the shops left their exterior lights turned on, there was nobody walking the streets. Even Shorty’s looked quiet, as the colder season meant that there were less and less truck drivers passing through. As Clootie would say, this was what happened to a town without men.

Lit by the moon, the gates of Bobo’s homestead were visible in the distance. Wynonna parked in the woods about five hundred metres away from it. She turned off the engine and looked at Nicole, breathing deeply. “Is it kicking in yet?”

“Yep,” Nicole said. She was silent for most of the drive, and her voice was slurring, her head resting easily against the window.

They had debated the best method of how to bring Nicole to Bobo. It had to look like she came unwillingly. The pretend-scuffle, although fun, was ruled out quickly, because Wynonna couldn’t risk Nicole getting a concussion or any injury that would stop her from completing the next phase. Holding Nicole at gunpoint was unbelievable, on account of her track record. So they decided on lacing whiskey with GHB. Nothing like a shot of roofies to start off a clandestine mission.

“Awesome.” Wynonna corrected herself: “Obviously, not awesome for you.” She hopped out of her truck and coaxed Nicole to get out, as heavy-limbed as she was. She got Nicole to sit on the opened hatch. She pulled out a length of rope from the metal crate in the back of her truck and proceeded to tie Nicole’s hands behind her back, and then did the same to her ankles. Finally, Wynonna tied a gag around Nicole’s mouth. She checked the other woman for signs of distress. “This okay?”

Nicole nodded, closing her eyes in preparation for the blindfold. As soon as Wynonna finished securing it, she succumbed to the drugs, falling limp against Wynonna’s bent knee.

Wynonna scooted backwards, catching Nicole by the armpits to gently lower her on the truck bed. She pulled Nicole further into the bed and covered her with a scratchy wool blanket she kept in the crate. She got out so that she could close the hatch. She stared at the unconscious woman for a minute, bracing herself for what they were about to do. She hoped that it would work. Otherwise this whole thing would have been for nothing.

* * *

Bobo looked at the restrained redhead in the truck, his mouth quirking up into a sadistic smile. “Well done, Wynonna,” he said. “Pastor Clootie surely won’t hesitate to invest in me after this.” He nodded at two of his lackeys to remove Nicole from the truck.

Wynonna watched as they opened the hatch and worked together to carry Nicole. She was just relieved that Bobo didn’t ask her to do it, because there was no way she could lift her. She would have just rolled her out onto the ground. “Where are you taking her?” she asked.

“We’re securing her until Pastor Clootie arrives tomorrow,” Bobo said.

They both watched as the two lackeys disappeared into the house with Nicole.

Wynonna tried to quash down her worries about Nicole. She looked up at Bobo. “All right,” she said. “We had a deal.”

“Yes. We did.” Bobo beamed at her, but the joy in it wasn’t pure. It was sadistic. 

There was a sharp pain on the back of Wynonna’s skull, and before she could even react, everything went black.

* * *

Wynonna had a headache. The light coming from the lamp in the far corner of the room burned every time she tried to open her eyes. She attempted to move her hand, to rub at her eyes, but she couldn’t. She moved them again, and she realised that her wrist was rubbing against rope.

“Shit,” she croaked. She forced herself to open her eyes. She was in a barn, wrists tied around one of the posts, as if she was hugging it. Her revolver was in its holster, on an upturned wooden crate, out of reach. “Of course.” She would have rolled her eyes if she wasn’t in so much pain. Bobo Del Rey would go lengths to not just put her in danger, but embarrass her, too.

“Welcome back, Wynonna,” Bobo said.

“This wasn’t part of the deal!”

Bobo shrugged. “I was trying to be spontaneous,” he said.

“The deal was I get you Nicole Haught, and you give me information about Willa,” Wynonna said.

“I know you. You don’t think I know you?” Bobo snarled. He stepped forward so that his shadow loomed over Wynonna. “I don’t care how many years you spent in juvenile detention. You don’t have a real criminal bone in your body. I don’t believe that you brought me Clootie’s bitch because you're  _ loyal  _ to me. I know you have  _ other  _ plans.”

“I don’t!” Wynonna insisted. “I promise you.”

“Promises? From an Earp?” Bobo laughed. “You don’t think I learned my lesson already?”

Wynonna frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Your daddy promised me many things,” Bobo said. “And I didn’t get a single one of them. Remember that night? On the homestead? I was coming to collect my debt. Too bad you had to ruin everything.”

“What did Ward Earp promise you?”

“Let’s just say that your drunken sheriff of a father had less redeeming qualities than you remember,” Bobo said.

“Is that why you took Willa?”

Bobo didn’t answer. Instead, his lips curled into a tight smile. He began walking backwards to the barn doors. “Ramaker, please make sure Wynonna is comfortable,” he told Malcolm, who was standing by the door, gun in hand. “When her ginger friend suffers at our guest’s hands tomorrow, I want her to be in the audience.” With a flourish of his fur coat, Bobo turned on his heel and exited the barn.

Malcolm stared at Wynonna.

Wynonna called out his name. “Come on, man, we worked together,” she said. “You can help me out here.”

Malcolm kept staring, but Wynonna could see that he was softening towards her.

“You were there at the homestead that night,” Wynonna said. If Bobo wasn’t going to tell her the truth, then she’d have to lose some dignity and beg for it from someone else. “Remember? I was just a kid then. Do you remember my older sister? Willa. She was fourteen at the time. Bobo took her with you, when you left.”

Malcolm didn’t respond.

“Malcolm,  _ please _ . I don’t know what’s gonna happen to me after tomorrow, but I don’t want to go out like this, without knowing what happened to my sister,” Wynonna pleaded. She got to her feet, tugging on the ropes that snagged on the post as she did.

Silence.

Finally, Malcolm cleared his throat. He approached Wynonna. “I remember her,” he said. “Ward’s favourite.”

“Yes.” Nobody had said it out loud before, at least in front of Wynonna, and hearing it sent a jab of pain through her heart.

“At first, we didn’t know why Bobo took her. What did Bobo need with a kid, right? We still had the brothels at the time, but we knew that girl was too young for ‘em. We decided that someone was gonna speak up if Bobo tried throwing in there. But he never did.”

At this, Wynonna allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. As her eyes moved upwards, she noticed the dilapidated state of the barn. The post she was tied to was attached to a frame of rotting wood. If she started pulling hard enough, she could get enough leverage to dislodge the post. But she needed to distract Malcolm. “And then?” she prompted.

Malcolm continued: “No. It soon became clear that Bobo was raising her as his own. Except she was having none of it. She kept running away, and he’d have to send people to chase her down and bring her back. She did it five or six times over two years. And then finally Bobo got sick of chasing after her. One night, she just left and never came back.”

“You haven’t heard from her since? Is she still alive?” Wynonna had been holding onto hope all these years. If they had found a body that could have been Willa’s, Gus would’ve been contacted first. She yanked on the ropes.

“Another gang took her in. They work near Calgary. The gang’s leader was Lou, and Willa didn’t know it, but he was good friends with Bobo,” Malcolm said. “The last I heard, Lou was trying to extort Bobo for money, because Willa had gotten hooked on their product and was stealing. Bobo refused. And then I never heard her name anymore.”

Wynonna pulled on the rope. The post inched towards her. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“What do you think could’ve happened to her?” Wynonna pulled again and the wood groaned. She could see that the rotting wood above her was shedding flakes, floating slowly to the ground.

Malcolm shrugged. “You’ve seen heroin addicts.”

“Yeah.” Wynonna’s gaze fell to the floor. She planted her feet. What happened to Willa was a foregone conclusion. But she had no time to grieve her sister. She had to find a way to save Nicole. She needed to take her chances on this last pull. “Sorry, Malcolm,” she said, and then with as much force as she could muster, yanked backwards.

The rotting wood thudded to the ground, along with a piece of corrugated iron roofing, which hit Malcolm’s head. Being a big guy, Malcolm just shrugged it off, but in the commotion, Wynonna was able to free herself from the post. Hands still tied, she made a run for her revolver. With its structure compromised, parts of the barn collapsed around them.

“You bitch!” Malcolm yelled. 

Wynonna heard the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking. She didn’t even dare to look back. She jumped in a gap between two walls, one of which had slumped inwards. There was a loud crack behind her, and a bullet whizzed and embedded itself into the wall, narrowly missing Wynonna’s hip.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Wynonna sprinted towards the nearest fence. With her wrists still tied and her hands still holding onto her holster, she took precious seconds climbing over the fence, and then dropping on the other side. She ran into the woods, not caring about the darkness. 

When she was sure that nobody was chasing directly after her, she hid behind a large tree and discovered, to her relief, that the ropes around her wrists had gone sufficiently slack from all the movement. She wriggled her wrists a bit more until she had enough room to slip them out of the rope. Wincing as the blood flowed unimpeded into her hands, she put on her holster. She reached into the inside pocket of her jacket, feeling lucky that neither Bobo nor Malcolm thought to find her phone there. She turned on the screen with shaking hands and tried to make a call.

She also felt lucky that Bobo chose to invade a homestead with strong cell service.

Someone picked up on the other end of the line. “Earp?”

“Dolls. I need your help. Quick.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, three more chapters to go after this. I've been slammed at work, guys. I'm actually glad I wrote all of this fic out in advance before I had to go back to work. I've had very little time for myself! But anyway, your comments make me happy and I'll get around to replying to you guys soon enough.
> 
> This week, the action comes to a head!

Waverly hadn’t stopped thinking about Nicole.

Waverly couldn’t stop thinking about Nicole.

She couldn’t remember the last time she was so captivated by another person. Her last relationship was with Champ Hardy, but she never felt compelled to explore Champ’s hidden depths. That would be assuming that he had any to begin with. He was sweet and simple and he wanted Waverly, and that was all that teenage Waverly needed.

But  _ Nicole _ . Even thinking of her name made Waverly’s stomach flutter. The more time they spent together, the more fuel these butterflies had. Nicole was reliable yet full of surprises. She was honest yet mysterious. She was compassionate yet unyielding. She grew up with money, she had experiences that Waverly could only dream of, yet she remained humble. She didn’t give the impression that she was above anything.

And it didn’t help that she was unreasonably beautiful.

Waverly had not felt this way about someone before, man or woman. Champ was cute, and then she went to university and there, she realised that girls— _ women _ —were even cuter—no, they were  _ beautiful _ . But between her studies and summers on the homestead, she hadn’t really given herself the chance to think about it. Nicole’s arrival suggested to her that she probably needed to process four years of cycling between denial and confusion.

She hated fighting with her sister, but the silver lining was that she and Nicole were spending more time than ever. She worked out the timing so that she would leave the house around the same time that Nicole would emerge from the cabin. If the ATV was still around, either because Wynonna had left it for them or she was sleeping in from whatever she did the night before, they would ride it together. Nicole would sit up the front, and Waverly behind her, holding onto her torso as they zoomed off to the far side of the homestead. And god, what ran through Waverly’s mind as she felt Nicole’s lean muscles under her palms made her blush, even in zero degree weather.

Waverly didn’t want to think about processing. She didn’t even want to process. She just wanted Nicole.

One afternoon, Nicole was reinforcing some fencing along the east end of the homestead. Though it was just below ten degrees, the sun was out, so Nicole had her wide-brimmed hat on and the sleeves of her blue work shirt rolled up to her elbows. She was so focused that she didn’t notice Waverly.

“Hey,” Waverly said quietly, as to not startle her.

Nicole turned to her and beamed. She always looked pleased to see Waverly. “Hi there.”

“So, we’ve been working so hard the last few weeks, and you must be going crazy being stuck on the homestead since Dolls benched you,” Waverly said.

Nicole laughed. “Well, that’s one way to put it,” she said. “But I’m not going crazy. I like working here.”

“Oh.” Waverly wrung her hands. “Okay, but I was thinking we should go for a night out sometime. Not in Purgatory. Let’s go to Calgary. It’s a big city, so I’m sure it’ll be okay. We can go to a quiet-ish restaurant.”

“With a decent vegetarian menu?” Nicole teased.

“Yes, of course,” Waverly said. “I mean, we can go to any place you like. I’m sure you’re sick of having the same three meats every day.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea, Waverly,” Nicole said, the smile not disappearing from her face. “I’ll let you pick the restaurant, though.”

Waverly went to town after that to research restaurants. She printed off a shortlist to show Nicole. They briefly talked about it after dinner, narrowing the choices down to two, before Nicole excused herself to get ready for bed.

Later that night, Waverly heard Wynonna’s truck leave the homestead, but she didn’t think anything of it.

* * *

Someone had their hand on her shoulder, shaking her. “Waverly. I need you to wake up.”

Waverly opened her eyes. Her room was dark, but she could make out Wynonna’s form, silhouetted by the sliver of blue moonlight from the gap in her curtains. “What’s happening?” she croaked out.

Wynonna began peeling her blankets off of her. “Get dressed,” she said. “Nicole’s in trouble.”

* * *

It was an odd, bleary-eyed bunch in the bullpen of the sheriff’s station basement. Wynonna was holding a bag of frozen peas to the back of her head. Dolls was on his third cup of coffee. Jeremy had his winter coat over what was obviously a flannel pyjama top. Interestingly enough, Sheriff Nedley was also there, rumpled and unshaven.

Wynonna laid out the situation for them, though by Dolls’s reaction, it was obvious that he had heard it before. Wynonna and Nicole attempted an unauthorised sting mission at Bobo Del Rey’s homestead. Bobo and his men ended up capturing and separating them. Wynonna managed to escape, and knowing that trying to get to Nicole alone would be a suicide mission, decided to call Dolls.

“You forgot to tell them about the hundred grand,” Dolls said.

Just before Waverly could ask about ‘the hundred grand’, a blonde woman walked in the door. She had her hair in a neat bun, and wore a knee-length, dark grey wool coat. Her gaze landed immediately on Dolls. “Xavier,” she said curtly.

Jeremy gasped.

Dolls rose from his seat. “Eliza,” he said. He looked at the people seated around the desk. “Uh, guys, this is Staff Sergeant Eliza Shapiro, from the RCMP.”

“You want to know about the hundred grand?” Eliza took Dolls’s vacated chair. “Nicole got in touch with me, saying that she could intercept a gang payment to Pastor Clootie. She did so successfully, and turned the money into me, for evidence. She needed to get somewhere safe afterwards, and she told me she’d tell me as soon as she did, but then she ended up  _ here _ .” She gave the sparsely furnished bullpen a disdainful look. “This is minimalist, Xavier. Even for you.”

“They don’t like me as much as they like you,” Dolls retorted.

“Apologies for interrupting the reunion banter, but we need a plan to rescue Nicole,” Waverly said.

Nedley mumbled in agreement.

“She’s right,” Wynonna said.

Eliza put her hands on her hips. “Well, she wouldn’t be in danger if she didn’t decide to do you a favour, huh, Wynonna  _ Earp _ ?” she challenged.

“Fuck off,” Wynonna responded.

Waverly looked between Wynonna and Eliza. “Is this about finding Willa?”

For a moment, she thought she could see a strange emotion creep into Wynonna’s eyes, but they hardened just as quickly. “As far as I know, Nicole was free to chase whatever lead she wanted,” she said. “She was working independently.”

“She was contracted to the  _ Mounties _ ,” Eliza said.

“Not anymore,” Wynonna shot back.

Dolls cleared his throat. “This isn’t helping,” he said. “Yes, you withheld information from me, but -”

“ _ But _ ?” Eliza glared at him. “Is delaying a criminal investigation not a big deal to you, Sergeant?”

“Enough!” Nedley’s voice boomed around the bullpen, causing Jeremy to jump in his seat. “I am the sheriff of this town and you will listen to me. We do not have time to play the blame game right now. We have a hostage situation on our hands, and you feds should be the last people having petty squabbles. And  _ you _ ,” he pointed at Dolls, “you’ve been here for a while. You should know better than to engage with Wynonna when she’s being like this.”

“Oh yeah, Nedley? Being like what?” Wynonna demanded.

Waverly reached over to hit her sister on the arm. “What did he just say?” she hissed.

Wynonna, to her credit, looked sufficiently chastised.

“Sergeant Dolls. Staff Sergeant Shapiro. Give your ranks some damn respect and help us come up with a plan,” Nedley commanded.

* * *

Thanks to Jeremy and some satellite images captured at a quality only available to law enforcement, they were able to figure out ideal entry and exit points for Bobo’s homestead. Dolls and Eliza would be infiltrating, with Sheriff Nedley and his deputies to come in as reinforcement, should a firefight ensue. After a heated discussion about whether they should allow civilians, Eliza relented and agreed that Wynonna, with her knowledge of the homestead, would be the best person to rescue Nicole.

“I’m going with Wynonna,” Waverly said, as soon as Nedley went upstairs to prepare his troops. There was no way she would say it in front of him. She knew Nedley would sooner sacrifice ten of his deputies than put the town’s favourite Earp—relatively speaking—in danger.

“Uh, like hell you are,” Wynonna retorted.

Dolls spoke more reasonably. “Waverly, it’s a huge risk for you to be out there,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s good for us to be taking more risk than we have to.”

“Listen to him, Waves,” Wynonna said.

But Waverly wasn’t going to stop pushing. “Everyone is in a team here.” She pointed at Dolls and Eliza. “You guys are completing your role in this as a pair. I think it’s riskier sending Wynonna out there by herself, doing what is going to be a difficult job.” She paused, not wanting to say the next words. She took a deep breath and said them anyway. “We don’t know what state Nicole is going to be in. Rescuing her isn’t going to be a job for one person. Wynonna’s gonna need backup.” Waverly turned to her sister, to see if she was at least a little bit convinced. Frustratingly, Wynonna’s face remained impassive.

Eliza, however, looked intrigued. “How do you hold up in a fight, Waverly?” she asked.

“Wynonna’s seven years older than me and sometimes she treated me like her punching bag. How do you think I held up in a fight?” Waverly shrugged. “And I’m not bad with a shotgun, if I do say so myself.”

“Okay.” Eliza turned to Dolls. “Give the girl a shotgun.”

“What?” Dolls was incredulous.

“I’m pulling rank, Sarge,” Eliza said. “Sorry, Xavier, but clearly every civilian you’re working with is so intent to get themselves killed. And honestly, I’m starting to sympathise with them. Give Waverly a damn shotgun. We need to be prepared for a firefight.”

Dolls sighed and opened the gun safe.

“You don’t have to do this, Waverly,” Wynonna said.

“Yes. I have to.” Waverly thought of Nicole, of how alone and frightened she must be feeling. She thought of Wynonna and the dangers she’d have to face to get to Nicole. Wynonna shouldn’t get to save Nicole alone. Waverly should have that chance, too. 

* * *

The bulletproof vests were itchy, but Nedley had insisted that everyone wear them. Waverly’s was musty, like it hadn’t been worn in years. Not many deputies came in her size, after all. Before they piled into Dolls’s SUV, Nedley checked Waverly’s vest. He prodded at the velcro straps with his meaty fingers.

“Can’t believe you’re doing this, Waverly,” he grunted.

“Are you going to give me that whole lecture about being a civilian?” Waverly asked, sighing. “Because you know that I’ve already had to endure it from Dolls.”

“No.” Nedley grabbed the vest by the shoulders and shook Waverly lightly, testing the fit like it was a life jacket, and they were just going boating. “It’s just that, before your father died, he made me promise to protect you and Wynonna so long as I wore this badge.” He tapped the sheriff’s badge on his chest. “And now here I am, sending you off to the men that killed him.”

“I know, Sheriff. But without us, Nicole is most likely going to die,” Waverly said. “I can’t have that.” The unspoken hung between them. Waverly hadn’t even hit double digits in age when she had already experienced three big losses. And not long ago, she had lost Curtis, too. She might have grown close to Nicole too quickly, but even if she hadn’t, it didn’t matter. Bobo Del Rey had taken one too many people from her already.

“If only I could override the feds,” Nedley said.

“You said you were protecting us,” Waverly said. “But what about the town? How could you just sit and watch while Bobo and the Revenants took advantage of Purgatory?”

Nedley stepped back from Waverly. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He had looked worse for the wear in recent years, but at this moment, he looked just about ready to retire. “You were too young to remember, but Ward picked his battles, too. It’s what you gotta do to be a sheriff in a forgotten town,” he said. “Sometimes you just can’t afford to start a war. So you just save the ones you can.”

“Then you must understand, then.”

“Understand what?” Nedley asked.

“Why I’m about to do this.”

* * *

Wynonna was stewing with frustration.

They sat in the back of Dolls’s SUV, as if they were just going on a road trip, instead of a rescue mission to a criminal’s house. Dolls and Eliza were up front, talking strategy in low voices, easy for Waverly to tune them out. Instead, she focused on Wynonna, who was looking straight ahead, her jaw set, eyes hard.

“Wynonna,” she said gently.

“Spent all this time learning about the homestead, learning how to survive on our own, making sure we didn’t have to go through the same shit Daddy did,” Wynonna muttered. “Fucking Purgatory. Hasn’t ever been fucking good for us.”

“Wynonna, we can’t just leave Nicole to fend for herself,” Waverly reminded her.

“I know that,” Wynonna said. “It’s my fault. I asked her to help me find Willa and Nicole’s just too much of a good person to refuse. I should have just let her go with Dolls.” Rarely did Wynonna sound so regretful.

Waverly’s heart ached. If Wynonna hadn’t asked Nicole for help, then she would have gone with Dolls, and then her and Waverly wouldn’t have gotten to know each other. Waverly wanted to kick herself. Nicole was in mortal danger, while she was still thinking about other things. The wrong things. “She is too good,” she finally agreed. “You know she’d have always found a way to help us.”

Wynonna just grunted in response.

“Did you get anywhere? With your search for Willa?”

Tears actually sprung to Wynonna’s eyes. Waverly felt bad for asking the question. Wynonna blinked rapidly and took a shaky breath. “I don’t want to talk about it yet, baby girl, if that’s okay,” she said, before pressing the heel of her hand into her closed eyelids.

“Okay,” Waverly agreed quietly. She changed the subject. “Did you know Nicole’s family owns a vineyard on Vancouver Island?”

“What?”

“Nicole’s family. They’re winemakers,” Waverly said.

“Oh.” Wynonna chuckled. “Gewürztraminer,” she said distantly, as if recalling something.

“Pardon?”

Wynonna laughed this time. “Haught’s a winemaker, huh? Of course she fucking is.”

* * *

The plan on paper was simple. They would leave the SUV in the woods. They would cross the woods to get onto the property. Wynonna and Waverly would head for Nicole, while Dolls and Eliza neutralise threats and possibly apprehend either Bobo or Clootie. Whichever one was easier. Once all that happened, they were going to contact the sheriff. If they didn’t get in touch with the sheriff in fifteen minutes, he and his squad of deputies were going in anyway.

Simple, right? But until they got there, they had no way of knowing how many Revenant would be around, or how strong of an entourage Clootie brought.

They stopped at the fence separating the woods from the property. From here, Waverly could see the barn, half torn down. “Is that the -?”

“Yep,” Wynonna said.

Dolls handed Wynonna a pair of binoculars.

“Doesn’t look like Clootie’s here yet. We might be early, or they’ve taken her elsewhere.”

“And Revs?” Dolls asked.

“Just the usual, from what I can see,” Wynonna said. “Might be some more on the other side.”

“Guess we’re gonna have to avoid the other side then, if possible,” Dolls said. He looked at the women beside him, one by one. “Are you guys ready for this?”

Wynonna was looking at Waverly as she responded: “Ready or not, we’ve got a ginger to save.”

They jumped the fence and ran onto the property to take shelter in the ruins of the barn. They hadn’t spotted any people so far. “All right, guys,” Dolls said. “Keep an ear on out. Stay safe.” He looked at Eliza and jerked his head towards the front of the property.

Eliza nodded at Waverly and Wynonna, before following Dolls.

Wynonna was uncharacteristically wordless as she led Waverly around the back of the house. Bobo had left this expropriated property sparse and neglected. It was for his own security, as he could then be more aware of law enforcement coming to him, but at the same time, it meant he didn’t have a lot of places to hide hostages. And since the barn was out of commission, Nicole was likely still in the house, unless Bobo took her someplace else to see Clootie.

Getting onto the property was so easy, it set Waverly on edge. Something bad should be about to happen.

Just as she thought it, Wynonna pried the house’s back door open, and they came face to face with a large, bearded man aiming a gun at them.

“Ah, the Earp girls,” the man snarled. “We were expecting you.”

“Samuel.” Wynonna raised her open palms. She shifted her stance so that she was right in front of Waverly, between her and the gun.

“Sorry, Wynonna. Bobo said no other visitors today.”

“Really?” Ignoring the gun, Wynonna moved closer to him. “What are you gonna do about the gatecrashers?”

Samuel cocked his gun. “Oh, you know,” he said.

Waverly grasped the back of Wynonna’s leather jacket. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

Samuel’s eyes left Wynonna and landed on Waverly. “Oh, baby sister speaks,” he said.

“Hey, I didn’t tell you you could look at Waverly,” Wynonna said. Waverly noticed that in Samuel’s distraction, she had lowered her hand on her hip and was slowly unfastening a holster that wasn’t her gun’s.

“Shut up,” Samuel said, his eyes still on Waverly. “Bobo would be delighted!” And then there was a zapping noise, and Samuel yelped as he collapsed onto his knees, and then finally on the ground.

“Bobo’s not collecting Earps anymore,” Wynonna said. She retracted the taser from Samuel’s shoulder, and winced as she gingerly kicked his gun away from his reach. “Come on, Waves. Jump over his body. You don’t wanna get shocked, trust me.”

Waverly obliged, hopping over Samuel’s still-twitching form.

There were two lackeys seated at the bottom of the stairs. They both reached for their guns upon seeing the sisters.

“Earp. Still had the nerve to show your face, huh?” Seated at the dining table, a man with long hair and an eyepatch spoke. He had bandages wrapped around his head, and his arm in a sling.

“Malcolm, glad you’re still alive,” Wynonna said.

The man called Malcolm nodded at his two companions on the stairs. “Take ‘em up to Bobo,” he said. He leaned back in his chair as the men grabbed Wynonna and Waverly. “Looks like you  _ are _ gonna see your friend die after all.” At this, Waverly felt a small sense of relief. Nicole was still here.

Waverly and Wynonna were roughly pushed up the stairs by the thugs. When they got to the attic landing, the thug who had a hold on Waverly took her shotgun off of her. “This is nice,” he said, leering at Waverly. “You sure you know how to use this, girl?”

Waverly spat in his face.

“Waverly!” Wynonna exclaimed.

The man wiped Waverly’s spit off his face. For a moment, he looked like he was about to hit Waverly, but he stopped himself and lowered his hand. “Nah, I’ll leave Bobo to deal with you.” He grabbed Waverly by the arm again, and pulled her as he opened the attic door with his other hand.

Bobo Del Rey stood inside, looking out the window, still wearing his fur coat despite the warmth. There was an unconscious body lying on the floor, facing away from them, with a head of telltale red hair.

“Nicole!” Waverly gasped out. “What did you do to her?”

The man tightened his grip on Waverly. “Relax, she’s gonna wake up in time for Pastor Clootie,” he said.

That was when Bobo turned around to face them. He always had a flair for the dramatic. His face broke out into a menacing smile when he spotted Waverly. “I see you’ve brought the baby!” he gleefully said to Wynonna. He turned to Waverly. “Hi, Waverly. Do you remember me?” he asked, his tone dripping with fake sweetness.

Waverly struggled against the man holding onto her. She could feel bruises forming on her arms. “Of course I remember you,” she said. “You killed my father.”

“No.” Bobo pointed at Wynonna. “ _ She  _ killed your father!” He walked over to Wynonna, and touched her chin lightly with his pointed finger. “You had to make it messy, huh? Ward was willing to cooperate, but you, you little brat, you just had to make it worse.”

“Worse?” Wynonna recoiled from Bobo’s touch. “By shooting him, I practically gave you the keys to Purgatory.”

“You don’t understand!” Bobo screamed suddenly. He took a few steps backwards, as if he had insufficiently braced for the force of his words. “With your father alive, I wouldn’t have had to turn to Clootie.”

Wynonna frowned. She made eye contact with Waverly, both of them confused. “What?”

“Your father was no hero, and no genius either, though I’m sure you already knew that,” Bobo said. “But he was smart enough to know that I’m the lesser of two evils. He didn’t want Pastor Clootie anywhere near Purgatory. So we worked out a deal. He let me do my business so long as me and my men kept to ourselves.” He sighed. “I actually thought he was a bit of a killjoy. That’s why I let loose without him. But then I quickly learned that was an expensive way to live. That’s why I needed Clootie.”

Waverly couldn’t believe that Purgatory’s trajectory had been beholden to the whims of corrupt, selfish men making idiotic decisions. Actually, she had a history degree. She knew that this scenario was pretty believable in the grand scheme of things.  _ Still _ . “Have you ever, you know, considered  _ not  _ doing crime?” she asked Bobo.

Bobo stared at her for a few seconds, and threw his head back and laughed. “Not everyone is as clever as you, Waverly,” he said. “Some of us need to find other ways to make a living.” He looked down at Nicole, who was still out cold. “And now I’m about to hit the biggest jackpot.” He grinned up at the two sisters. “The next time you’ll see me, I’ll be Clootie’s lieutenant.”

“No fucking way,” a quiet voice said.

Before anyone could work out where the voice came from, Nicole sat up and kicked at Bobo’s ankles, causing him to stumble forwards. Nicole got to her feet, inexplicably limber after being drugged, and brought two fists down onto Bobo’s back before he could get up, bringing him to the floor again. Her legs worked hard on Bobo’s ribs, causing Bobo to gasp for breath.

Waverly heard a groan beside her as Wynonna stomped on her assigned thug’s foot, and having caught him off guard, whirled around and kicked him in the groin, then punched him in the nose for good measure. “Waverly! Move!” she yelled, as she backhanded the man across the face.

The man holding Waverly wasn’t quite sure on whether to help Bobo or his companion. In the fuss, he had loosened his grip on Waverly. Waverly drove her elbow back and caught him right in the diaphragm. He made a choking noise. Waverly turned around, dodging as he reached for her. She gouged his eyes and then punched him in the nose, causing him to scream in pain. Waverly managed to liberate her shotgun from his possession, and she used its butt to hit her captor right on the head, knocking him out.

Wynonna had similarly incapacitated the other thug. She was already pointing her gun at his head. She looked at Waverly. “Run,” she said.

“What?” Waverly asked. There was no way she was leaving her sister here.

Someone’s hands held her shoulders and began pushing her out of the attic. “Come on, Waverly.” It was Nicole. They all but tumbled down the stairs.

“Wynonna,” Waverly managed to get out.

“I’m right behind you,” Wynonna said. “Hurry up. Bobo’s not gonna stay down for very long.”

Malcolm was no longer at the bottom of the stairs. Samuel was also not where they left him. They had probably gone to get reinforcements. A gunshot rang out outside. And then another.

“I need a weapon,” Nicole told both of them.

“I thought you were drugged,” Waverly said.

“I pretended to be,” Nicole said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Wynonna was peering out the window. “You two, stop that,” she said. She paused as she heard thundering footsteps from the attic. She nodded towards a rack of guns by the door. “Nicole, grab one of those. We need to help Dolls and Eliza.” That was not part of the plan. The plan was to get Nicole back to Dolls’s SUV.

“Earp!” Bobo yelled from the stairs.

“Let’s go, let’s go. Waverly, stay behind me,” Wynonna said. She opened the front door and creeped out, revolver first. The three of them hunched down on the porch.

Dolls and Eliza were hiding behind one of the Revenants’ trucks. Dolls was crouched down, reloading, while Eliza was shooting indiscriminately. Waverly could see the hint of a smirk on her face as she clipped a Revenant on the shoulder. Sirens sounded in the distance, and through the trees, Waverly could see the flash of red and blue lights. She thought that this would be quite a sight for Clootie to arrive to.

But Wynonna’s next words made Waverly’s blood go cold. “Clootie’s already here.”

“Yes, I am.” A sallow man in a black suit appeared behind them, flanked by Bobo on one side, and another man, also in a suit, on his other side. A henchman. “And I see that you  _ have  _ got something for me, Mr Del Rey. Two Earp girls and the bitch who stole my money.”

Bobo, his lip split and his cheek bruised, smiled a bloody smile.

Wynonna aimed her revolver at Clootie.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Clootie said.

“I’ve already shot one self-righteous, patriarchal bastard,” Wynonna said. “What’s stopping me from doing it again?”

“This.” Clootie nodded at his henchman, who drew a small pistol. From his hip, he aimed it at Waverly, and pulled the trigger.

Waverly squeezed her eyes shut, preparing for the pain, and cringed as the gunshot echoed in her ears.

A second gunshot made her open her eyes. She saw Wynonna pointing her revolver onto the man, a bullet hitting him square in the chest. He collapsed backwards, blood already blooming on the fabric of his white shirt.

And Waverly was still standing. That was when she saw Nicole lying on the floor in front of her.

“Nicole!” Waverly screamed. She pumped her shotgun and aimed it at Bobo.

“Police!” Nedley’s voice came over through a loudspeaker. “Drop your weapons!”

Both Waverly and Wynonna ignored it.

“Drop your weapons! Now!” Nedley yelled.

There was a gentle hand on Waverly’s upper arm. Eliza. Her other hand was pointing a gun towards Clootie and Bobo, who, being the narcissistic, greedy men that they were, were not armed. “Put it down, Waverly,” she told her quietly.

Waverly put the shotgun down, and Wynonna did the same with her revolver. 

Eliza and Dolls worked on apprehending the two men.

“Help!” Wynonna screamed in the direction of the police cars. “Someone needs medical attention!”

Waverly knelt down and pulled Nicole to her, Nicole’s back resting against her front. The front of Nicole’s shirt was slick with blood. “Nicole,” Waverly cried out. She tore open Nicole’s shirt to see the wound in her left hip. Nicole’s eyes were open, but her face seemed to be growing paler with every passing second.

Tears were streaming down Waverly’s face. “Nicole,” she said again. “Stay with me, okay? Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.” And she kept repeating this until the deputies arrived and Wynonna had to wrench her away.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did y'all catch me on the latest Earp Fiction Addiction podcast? If not, then you should go [check it out](http://efapodcast.com/can-you-feel-the-storm)!
> 
> This week, the gang spends an awful lot of time in the hospital.

Nicole was thankful that in one of her most fearful moments, Wynonna was beside her, still acting brazen. It served to ground Nicole a little bit.

“I’ve already shot one self-righteous, patriarchal bastard.” Wynonna’s grip on her revolver was unwavering as she pointed it at Clootie’s chest. She smirked. “What’s stopping me from doing it again?”

And then Clootie’s thug drew his weapon. He didn’t point it at Wynonna, but at Waverly. Immediately he had read that  _ Waverly  _ was Wynonna’s soft spot, the one to be protected. But it didn’t exactly take a genius to figure that out. 

Nicole knew that she had to act fast.

* * *

There was someone crying in the distance.

Not  _ sobbing _ , exactly, but a continuous sniffle that was quiet enough. 

Sometimes words were interspersed within the sniffling. “Please… More time… Barely even started… Please…” And then, her name: “Nicole.”

Nicole’s eyelids were heavy. She strained to open her eyes, but the light overhead just made them shut again. She tried to lift her head but she didn’t quite know where it was. She made another attempt to open her eyes. She could manage a squint. Her vision was hazy. Wherever she was, it was drowned in light. She could see a figure to her left, wearing white, their silhouette seemingly haloed.

An angel?

The figure must have noticed Nicole’s signs of life, because the sniffling stopped and their voice sounded clearer: “Nicole? Nicole, are you waking up?”

Nicole’s eyelids got too heavy.

* * *

There was a searing heat in Nicole’s left side.

It was not unlike that time she accidentally ironed over her own hand, back when she first moved to Vancouver and was learning to live on her own, except this heat didn’t appear to be going away any time soon. 

Nicole tried to cry out, but her throat was dry and she couldn’t make any words.

* * *

There was something tickling Nicole’s neck and chest.

There was something soft and warm pressed against her forehead.

There were some words spoken:

“Wake up soon, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * *

Eventually, Nicole managed to open her eyes.

She was in a hospital room. The walls were painted an off-white. 

She was wearing a hospital gown. There were tubes attached to her in various places.

She was alone.

She went back to sleep.

* * *

The next time she opened her eyes, she was looking into Doc Holliday’s face.

Doc smiled at her and placed a reassuring hand on her arm. “Welcome back, Miss Haught,” he said. “But you’re not out of the woods yet.”

“What happened?” Nicole croaked. She remembered what happened. Clootie’s henchman had a gun and shot her. What she wanted to know was what happened afterward, but her throat was still so dry.

Doc explained how the paramedics had brought her straight to the hospital in Calgary. “Gunshot wound to the hip. Close range, but luckily a small bullet. Minor organ damage, pelvic fracture, hip bone fracture. The worst of it, though is the damage to the muscle. Surgeon said it got messy in there,” he told her. “You’re gonna need strong pain meds and physical therapy for the next few months.”

That explained the pain in her hip. “What happened to Clootie? And Bobo?” she asked.

“They’ve been taken into custody. Arraignment happened yesterday.” Doc caught himself. He shook his head. “You have to rest, Nicole.”

Nicole nodded. “Could I have some water?”

* * *

“Nicole?”

“Waverly,” Nicole responded hoarsely.

At the sound of her name, Waverly jumped up from her seat next to Nicole’s bed. She leaned over Nicole and pushed Nicole’s hair back with a gentle hand. She kissed Nicole’s forehead and her lips lingered there for seconds. “Nicole,” she gasped in relief as she pulled back. “Doc told me you had woken up. I got here as soon as I could, but you were asleep when I arrived.” Her hand didn’t leave Nicole’s hair. “God, you scared me.”

“How -” Nicole cleared her throat, “how long was I out?”

“Nearly a week,” Waverly said. “I was so worried about you. The doctors said I shouldn’t, but you know, I couldn’t help it.”

“I’m okay,” Nicole said. She attempted a smile. “I think it’s the pain meds, though.”

Waverly managed a watery laugh. “I’m a little bit mad at you for letting Wynonna drag you into doing a stupid thing,” she said.

“Uh, did Wynonna tell you that it was  _ my  _ idea?”

“What?” Waverly frowned. She retracted her hand from Nicole’s head. “ _ You  _ wanted to give yourself up to Clootie?”

Nicole made a show of shifting backwards on the pillow, trying to hide her discomfort at the loss of skin contact. “Look, I wanted to get you and Wynonna some closure for Willa. And we didn’t go in without an escape plan. It just didn’t pan out, obviously,” she said.

“Don’t you dare act all casual about this, Nicole Haught. Bobo took you! You got shot!”

“You saved me,” Nicole said.

Waverly’s eyes widened. “No,  _ you  _ saved me. That bullet was meant for me,” she said.

“I couldn’t let them hurt you, Waverly. I’d rather be hurt myself,” Nicole said. It was some sort of penance in a way. She knew she always bit off more than she could chew. Since she had run away from Clootie the first time, everything always went some sort of pear-shaped because of decisions she made. She cared about Waverly and she couldn’t stand the thought of her being collateral damage.

“And I knew I didn’t want them to hurt you.” A tear was running down Waverly’s face. “That’s why I came to get you. I wanted to be the one to get you out of there.”

“Hey, you did,” Nicole said, with a small chuckle. She reached for Waverly’s hand. “Hey. Waverly,” she said softly.

Waverly held her gaze.

“Haught damn!” Wynonna stormed into the room with the broadest grin on her face. 

Waverly gently tugged her hand away from Nicole’s. She stepped aside to make way for Wynonna, who proceeded to drape herself on top of Nicole.

“Shit, dude,” Wynonna’s voice was quiet and pained. “I’m so glad.”

Though heartened by Wynonna’s concern, Nicole pushed her back sheepishly, as she felt a slight pulling sensation in her side. “Hey, sorry, but Doc said I’m still kinda fragile, so maybe let’s go easy on the hugging?”

Wynonna stepped back, a little embarrassed. “Yeah, sorry.” Her hands hung awkwardly for a second before she decided to throw an arm around Waverly’s shoulders. Waverly looked a little bit annoyed. “We waited for you to wake up, you know.”

“What about the homestead?” Nicole asked. It was a long drive to make every day.

“Don’t you worry about the homestead,” Wynonna said. “Have you eaten yet? Do you want me to go to the cafeteria and get you something?”

“I’m not hungry at the moment,” Nicole said. She suspected it had something to do with one of the tubes in her arm. She had no appetite, but she was keen on in the idea of some hot food that definitely did not come from a hospital cafeteria. “When I am, I’ll send you out to get me some Chinese food,” she told Wynonna.

“Gotcha,” Wynonna said.

“Sit down, both of you,” Nicole told the Earp sisters. “I’ve apparently been out for a week. I need some catching up. The pigs. Tell me about them.”

* * *

Her next visitors were Dolls and Eliza. They were escorted in by Doc, who didn’t look happy about their presence. He lingered by the door until Nicole gave him a look. He reluctantly shuffled away.

“How you doing, Haught?” Dolls asked.

“Better,” Nicole said. “Apparently I’ll be out day after tomorrow.”

“That’s good,” Dolls said. “You did a good job out there.”

“An  _ unauthorised  _ job,” Eliza said in a low voice.

Dolls glanced at her, and then back to Nicole. “Granted, I don’t approve of the vigilantism, but you’re good at thinking on your feet. Waverly told me how you managed to hold Bobo Del Rey off long enough so that you and the Earp girls could escape,” he said. “Ever consider becoming a cop?”

Nicole spoke a truth she had been harbouring inside for weeks now: “Actually, I think I’m done doing anything that involves law enforcement,” she said. “Once I get out of here, I’m writing a resignation letter.”

“No need,” Eliza told her. “Your employers wanted to fire you, after they heard about what happened. I managed to talk them down to letting you go with a decent severance package. You  _ did  _ get a lot of incriminating evidence against Clootie, after all. Even if your methods left a lot to be desired.”

“Oh, so I’m officially unemployed,” Nicole said. She wasn’t as disappointed about it as she thought she would be. “Yay me, I guess. My first and last time helping the Mounties. I went out with a bang.”

“To be fair, your employers shouldn’t have attached you to such a significant case on your first go,” Dolls said.

Nicole shrugged. “I was an overachiever.”

“And look where it got you,” Eliza said.

“Hey now!” Nicole felt a surge of annoyance towards Eliza. She was aware of Eliza’s pedantic tendencies, but she was not a fan of the way they translated to this bitter judgement. “Have you come here to visit your injured colleague who helped you nail that creepy pastor, or are you gonna keep giving me shit for not doing things the right way?” she demanded.

Eliza, to her credit, looked a bit admonished.

Nicole addressed Dolls: “No one’s told me much about what happened so far, only that they’ve been taken into custody.”

“As far as we know, Clootie’s got the best lawyer his money can buy. I think he and Bobo are planning to throw each other under the bus,” Dolls told her. “The rest of the Revenants who were present that morning have been arrested. Some of them have said they’re willing to expose the entire organisation.”

“All their accounts have been frozen so the money’s stopped moving around,” Eliza added.

“That is not gonna have a good effect on the businesses of Purgatory,” Nicole said.

Eliza shrugged. “That’s what happens when you decide to launder money for a gang.”

“They were  _ forced _ ,” Nicole said. She wasn’t even surprised that Eliza recovered so quickly, and was back to her bitchy self. “Their mine exploded, remember? Do you think if they really had a choice, they still would have chosen Bobo?” She gestured between the three of them. “We’re city people. We only have a small part of the picture when it comes to how they live here. I don’t think we’ve got any right to judge.”

“Sorry.” Eliza didn’t sound it, but at least she had her hands up, palms facing out.

Dolls looked between the two women, before stepping into the conversation: “Well, Waverly mentioned something about the two of you having an idea. Something like a business association for Purgatory?”

Nicole nodded. “We did a bit of research on it,” she said. “There hasn’t really been anything like it before, so we don’t know what the uptake is going to be.”

“It’s still worth talking about,” Dolls said. 

“We gotta convince Wynonna first. She doesn’t exactly have a good relationship with the people of Purgatory,” Nicole said. She knew that Waverly could be the most stubborn person, but she knew nobody in Purgatory was going to be persuaded if she couldn’t even get Wynonna onboard.

Dolls snorted. “That’s an understatement,” he said. “Though I’m sure that given everything that happened, Wynonna would feel more sympathetic towards what Purgatory has been through since the explosion.”

Nicole hoped that Dolls was right.

“In any case, I wish you luck.” Dolls checked his watch. “Look, Eliza and I need to go back to headquarters. We’ve got a meeting.” He held his hand out to Nicole. “Take care of yourself, Haught. If I can’t come and visit before you’re out of here, should I find you at the Earp homestead?”

Nicole shook his hand. “I haven’t talked to them about it yet, but probably,” she said.

Dolls smiled, softly and sincerely. “Okay. See you around.”

“See you.”

Dolls walked out of the room, Eliza trailing behind him.

* * *

Gus came to see her, with neither of the Earp sisters in sight. “Shorty gave me a break,” she explained. She smiled fondly at Nicole and took a chance to brush a lock of hair away from Nicole’s face. “Sweetie, you’ve had a real run of it, haven’t you?” she teased. “My girls can be trouble. What a way for you to find out.”

“Oh, it’s not like I don’t know that. Wynonna _ did  _ shoot me the first time she met me,” Nicole said, laughing gently. “I wanted to help them, but turns out me and Wynonna make pretty shitty detectives.”

“Turns out she’s not good being on either side of the law,” Gus said. “A born homesteader.”

“Well, let’s be fair. She always goes to the mat for the people she loves,” Nicole said. Wynonna was reckless, but her loyalty was awe-inspiring, and Nicole felt that people didn’t appreciate her enough for it.

“That she does,” Gus agreed. “Apparently the girls are going to pick you up tomorrow,” she told Nicole. “Do you know what your plans are yet? Surely you’re not going back to your job just yet. You need to recover!”

Nicole shook her head. She explained to Gus that her employers had let her go and that she had a bit of money to live on. She didn’t mention the trust fund. “I’m free to do what I want, really,” she said. “I can have a few months to sort myself.”

“Well, why don’t you stay with us at the homestead for as long as you need while you figure things out?” Gus suggested.

“Really?” If she was being honest with herself, Nicole didn’t want anything more. She had come to love life on the homestead, and the Earps played a significant part in it. But she didn’t want to further complicate her relationship with Waverly, and she certainly didn’t want to feel like she was just mooching off the Earps. “I mean, that would be nice, but I don’t know if Wynonna and Waverly would still want me around for much longer.”

“And why’s that?” Gus raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think the girls would object to having you live with us. You’re probably Wynonna’s first proper friend in  _ years _ , and Waverly thinks fondly of you.” There was an unfamiliar, yet telling, glint in her eye as she added: “ _ Very  _ fondly.”

What does Gus know? Nicole didn’t want to allow herself to speculate. Instead, she shook her head. “I know, but we’ve had a crazy few weeks,” Nicole said. “I’ll ask them about it, but I’d prefer not to continue imposing.”

“Who says you’re imposing?” Gus asked. “You’ve been helping out lots on the homestead, Nicole. Our plants have never looked better, and winter’s already setting in. And Wynonna says the animals like you better than her.”

“I think the animals will always like anyone better than Wynonna.”

Gus erupted in laughter. “You’re right!” She straightened the starched white covers of Nicole’s bed as she calmed down. “Hey, I’ll put in a good word for you with Waverly and Wynonna, though I’m sure it’s unnecessary,” she told Nicole. “I will  _ insist  _ that staying on the homestead would be the best way for you to heal. And besides, Christmas is coming up. You should spend it with us.”

* * *

The following morning, the doctor arrived, followed by Doc Holliday, who had Wynonna and Waverly in tow. The doctor tapped on the screen of a tablet while talking to Nicole about her hospital discharge and prescribed medication. She glanced up at her. “I take it you’re going to be in the Ghost River Triangle for at least the next two months?” she asked.

“I -” Nicole began. She hadn’t really been listening, on account of her being pumped up with a goodbye dose of pain medication. It made her slightly loopy.

“She’ll be in Purgatory indefinitely,” Wynonna declared.

Nicole stared at her, but Wynonna was still looking at the doctor.

“Okay then,” the doctor said, unfazed. “Someone will need to bring her here once a week for physical therapy. The dressings have to be changed once a day, but that can be done at home or at the medical centre in Purgatory.” She turned to Doc. “John Henry, are you okay doing the fortnightly checkups on her wound?”

“Yes, certainly,” Doc replied. His moustache twitched as he smiled at Nicole.

“All right.” The doctor tapped the tablet a couple more times, before closing its case and tucking it under her arm. “You’re free to get dressed and we’ll complete your discharge papers down at the nurse’s desk,” she told Nicole. “See you soon, Miss Haught.”

As soon as she walked out of the room, Wynonna gripped Doc’s upper arm. “Let’s go, Doc. We’ll pick up the medication. Waverly can help Nicole get ready.” They, too, left the room before Nicole could even thank them.

Waverly was holding a bag. She placed it on the bed next to Nicole. “I packed you some clothes.” When Nicole didn’t reply, she unzipped the bag and started pulling out articles of clothing: a long-sleeved thermal undershirt, navy sweatpants, socks, underwear, Nicole’s running shoes…

“Hey, I don’t recognise that shirt,” Nicole said, nodding at the olive green flannel shirt in Waverly’s hands.

“Oh, I bought this for you at the mall,” Waverly said. “I thought you’d look nice in this colour.”

Nicole was taken aback. “Thanks.”

“I got you a few new things, actually,” Waverly said. “They had to get rid of the clothes you were wearing, and you didn’t have that many to begin with in the first place.”

“Thanks,” Nicole said again.

“You’re welcome. Do you want me to wait outside while you get changed?” Waverly asked.

Nicole shook her head. “I’ll need your help,” she admitted. “I can’t really move much yet.”

“Well, why don’t you get your underwear on and then call me in when you’re ready?” Waverly suggested.

Nicole agreed to that. Waverly ducked out of the room, so Nicole shed her hospital gown, below which she only wore a pair of boyshorts. She took off the boyshorts and put on the fresh ones on the bed. She picked up the bra, noticing that Waverly had brought one of the ones that had back fasteners, as opposed to the sports bras she preferred. It was probably easier to put on, in theory. She shrugged it on over her arms and positioned the cups over her breasts. But when she moved to clasp it, she felt a dull pain in her side. If she could feel that even with the pain meds, she wasn’t going to push herself. She just had to swallow her shame. “Uh, Waverly?” she called out.

Waverly stepped inside, her eyes widening as she took in Nicole’s nearly-naked body. Her gaze fell to the floor. “You okay?” she squeaked.

Nicole may be drugged, but she could clearly see Waverly’s face and neck reddening. “I need help with my bra,” she said. “I can’t quite move my arm that way.”

“Of course!” Waverly’s voice remained high pitched. She quickly moved behind Nicole and took the clasps of the bra in her hands. They were cold and shaky. Waverly must have felt Nicole recoil against them, because she immediately apologised.

“It’s okay,” Nicole said, taking a deep breath, so that her brain wouldn’t overwhelm itself while Waverly was touching her.

Waverly successfully fastened the bra. Right away, she picked up the thermal undershirt and moved to Nicole’s front to help her into it. She pulled the fabric of the shirt over Nicole’s torso, her fingers lightly passing over Nicole’s abdomen. She adjusted the fabric of the sleeves until the shirt fit comfortably over Nicole. “All right, now the pants,” she said. She helped Nicole step into the sweatpants, and placed a steadying hand on her back as Nicole pulled them up her legs herself.

Nicole looked up from tying the drawstring to see Waverly undoing the buttons on the new green shirt. She wanted to laugh a little bit. Waverly got to dress her before she even got to undress her.

Waverly gasped. “Excuse me?” she choked out.

For a moment, Nicole was confused. And then she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Shit! Did I say that out loud?” She shut her eyes, in a futile attempt to erase the moment, or perhaps discover latent time travelling powers. “Oh, shit,” she said again. “It’s the meds, I swear.”

“Nicole -” Waverly began.

“I mean, it’s not that I’m  _ lying _ ,” Nicole blurted this out, then immediately realised that she had put her foot in it again.

“What?” Waverly asked. And then she took a deep breath. “Actually, you don’t have to explain yourself if you don’t want to, Nicole. I shouldn’t be putting you on the spot like this.”

“Waverly, I like you,” Nicole said. Since she had started, it was no use stopping. It wasn’t going to be the last time she would be on a drug-induced ramble anyway. There was no point delaying the inevitable.

“Oh.” Waverly blinked rapidly. “You like me,” she said slowly.

“I thought it was obvious,” Nicole said. “You don’t have to say anything back.”

Waverly was silent. She opened up the green shirt and swung it around Nicole’s shoulders. With soft hands, she guided Nicole’s arms through the sleeves. They locked eyes as Waverly buttoned the shirt, her knuckles and fingertips brushing the thin fabric of Nicole’s undershirt. Each touch was like fire. When she was finished, Waverly stepped back to appraise Nicole’s outfit. There was a smirk on her face, one that Nicole had been more accustomed to seeing on Wynonna’s. And then, Waverly’s next words were spoken in a quiet, yet steady voice: I would be lying if I said I haven’t imagined doing this in reverse.”

Nicole’s jaw went slack, but before she could formulate a response, Waverly had shoved her socks at her and began to rummage in her bag for Nicole’s down jacket.

* * *

They were adamant about Nicole not staying in the cabin.

It turned out that the couch in the living room converted into a bed. And so there were no arguments. Nicole would be staying in the house, where at least one of the three women could keep an eye on her at all times of the day. On the one hand, she was grateful for their commitment to caring for her, but on the other hand, she was feeling unenthusiastic about the lack of privacy.

Especially when Waverly Earp had started flirting with her.

_ Shamelessly  _ wouldn’t be the correct adverb to describe it. Waverly was still a bit shy for the most part, yet everything she did seemed powered by microbursts of audacity that faded as quickly as they came. She did things like letting her body press up against Nicole’s for a few seconds, or the way her hands deliberately varied in pressure whenever she changed Nicole’s dressings. Oh, and she was the  _ only  _ one who changed her dressings. Gus would try, and even Wynonna would halfheartedly volunteer, and yet Waverly would sweetly insist on doing the job for them. Waverly would also brush Nicole’s hair out of her face, or kiss her on the cheek after handing over her medicine and a glass of water.

It would have driven Nicole mad if she wasn’t feeling moved. Waverly may have been teasing, but she was also taking care of her. There was a growing intimacy between them. Too bad they hadn’t had the chance to talk about it.

One fortunate afternoon, Gus was at work and Wynonna had gone out to get groceries, but not before Waverly promised her that she wouldn’t let Nicole outside the house, not even to see the apple trees. As soon as her truck peeled out of the gates, Waverly stood by the couch. “Do you want to watch a movie together?” she asked Nicole.

Nicole nodded at the television, an older flat-screen model that Gus had bought secondhand from the local motel. “Don’t tell me that you’ve had Netflix on that all this time,” she said.

“No, but I’ve got a hard drive with movies on it,” Waverly said. “Chrissy torrents them for me,” she explained.

“Anyone want to tell Nedley that his kid breaks copyright laws?” Nicole joked.

“Come on, she just got the Blu-Ray copy of  _ Colette _ ,” Waverly said.

“Who?” Nicole asked. She was never one to have kept up with the movies, not even when she was living in the city.

“It’s a historical film. Keira Knightley as a bisexual French writer in the early twentieth century,” Waverly replied.

Nicole grinned at her. “You had me at Keira Knightley,” she said.

Waverly set the movie up, and then settled on the pull-out couch beside Nicole. By the end of the movie, she was leaning into Nicole’s right side, her hand resting on Nicole’s left thigh. As the credits rolled, she looked up into Nicole’s eyes. “That was lovely. Granted, not my idea of a first date,” she said.

God, Waverly always knew how to surprise her. Instead of asking Waverly to clarify what she meant, Nicole decided to go on the offensive. “Well, I saved a pretty girl’s life, so I’m unfortunately housebound in the meantime,” she retorted, taking pleasure in the way Waverly lost her composure. Until this moment, Nicole had not responded to any of her flirtatious actions since she had returned to the homestead.

But Waverly recovered, quicker than Nicole expected. “Pretty, huh?” she asked.

“ _ Beautiful _ .”

And just like that, Waverly was caught off guard again.

“Let’s call this Date Zero,” Nicole declared, smiling. “I believe I owe you an evening out in the city.” It was the last conversation they had before Nicole had gotten herself held hostage  _ and  _ shot.

“Yes, somewhere with a vegetarian menu,” Waverly agreed. “But only when you’re feeling much, much better.”

Nicole picked up Waverly’s hand off of her thigh. She lifted it to her lips and kissed Waverly’s knuckles, watching Waverly watch her. She slightly lowered Waverly’s hand. “Waverly, with you taking care of me, I’m sure I’ll be back to it in no time,” she said.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearly at the end of our journey! Sorry that I'm a day late on uploading, I got home from work late and got too tired.
> 
> Anyway, this week, we get some delicious relationship tidbits...

After Nicole had been taken to hospital in an ambulance, Wynonna had to force Waverly to come home. Her sister had been laser focused on ensuring Nicole’s survival. It was difficult to tear her away, but after arranging for a deputy to take her truck back to the homestead, Wynonna gently ushered Waverly into the backseat of Dolls’s SUV. Dolls drove them home in silence.

This was new for Wynonna. She talked big about how she took care of Waverly, but she had never taken care of her sister like  _ this _ . Sure, she worked so she could pay for the upkeep on the homestead, so they could keep growing and selling pigs, so that Waverly could still have a home, but she had never guided her shell-shocked sister into bed. She had never pulled the covers up to Waverly’s chin, and kissed her on the forehead. Not since Waverly was a baby.

Waverly was pale and wordless. She seemed content with whatever Wynonna was choosing to do, or just felt too powerless to resist.

“Do you want me to get you something to drink?” Wynonna asked.

Waverly just reached for her hand. She laced their fingers together. “Just stay here,” she whispered.

Letting go of Waverly’s hand, Wynonna laid down on top of the covers, beside her. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Can’t.”

“Just try, Waves,” Wynonna said, nearly pleading. 

“I keep thinking about Nicole,” Waverly said. “How her surgery’s going. If she’s gonna be okay.”

“The doctor said she was gonna be fine,” Wynonna said.

“I hope so. She saved me.”

There was something in tone of Waverly’s voice that broke Wynonna’s heart. She turned her head so that she was looking at Waverly’s face. 

Waverly was lying on her side, and she looked tired and sad, but her eyes were still somewhat awake. She bit her lip. “Tell me about Willa,” she said.

Wynonna inhaled sharply. “I’m not sure you want to hear about this right now.” She wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk about it.

“I want to know,” Waverly said. “She’s my sister too.”

She  _ was  _ their sister. Wynonna squeezed her eyes shut, mentally kicking herself for correcting the verb tense so easily. Almost automatically. Like she got too used to Willa’s loss that the permanence of that loss was an easy concept for her to grasp. “Waverly -” she began.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” Waverly asked.

“Waverly -” Wynonna started again.

“I thought she would be.” Waverly rolled onto her back, and Wynonna saw that she had a hand over her chest. “I felt it. I mean, we weren’t close, and half the time I felt like she was just trying to get rid of me, but when I think of her, there’s just an empty space there. Just like when I think of Daddy,” she told Wynonna. “When I thought about you when you were gone, it didn’t feel empty. It doesn’t even feel empty when I think about Mama. But him? And Willa?”

“Bobo took her but he didn’t take care of her, once she started getting a mind of her own,” Wynonna said. Hot tears stung her eyes. “She fell in with even worse people and he just left her to die there.”

“Did you find out? How she died?” Waverly’s voice was thick. She, too, had started crying.

“Drug overdose,” Wynonna said.

“God,” Waverly choked out. 

“I feel like I should have never tried to find her. I was never going to like the answer anyway,” Wynonna said. Then they wouldn’t be here right now, waiting on news for the health of a person she had dragged into their mess. No wonder people were wary of the Earps.

“We would have both wanted answers eventually, I guess. I know I would have tried to find her, too,” Waverly said. “And we did help the police get Bobo and that Clootie guy at the same time. It wasn’t for nothing.”

“Yeah, but Nicole got shot,” Wynonna said.

“It’s not your fault,” Waverly said.

Though reassured that Waverly wasn’t blaming her, Wynonna wanted to say that she was afraid that Nicole didn’t think the same. But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she thanked Waverly quietly, before rolling away from her and closing her eyes, attempting to go to sleep.

* * *

Relief flooded through Wynonna when she saw Nicole conscious, looking worse for the wear, but awake and alive nonetheless. Wynonna couldn’t help the happiness that she felt. At this point, Nicole was family to her; they had been through so much together in such a short amount of time.

Later that night, back at the homestead, Wynonna was getting ready for bed when there was a knock on her door. “Come in,” she said.

The door creaked open and Waverly walked in, wearing pyjamas, her hair up in a bun. “Hey,” she said. “Can we talk?” At Wynonna’s nod, Waverly shut the door behind her and sat down on Wynonna’s bed.

Wynonna placed her hairbrush back on her vanity. She sat beside Waverly. “What’s up?”

“I think I like Nicole,” Waverly said.

“What do you mean you ‘think’?” Wynonna asked.

Waverly looked up. “Well, I like Nicole,” she said.

“Everyone likes Nicole, Waves,” Wynonna said. “That’s kind of like her thing. Everyone liking her.”

Waverly shook her head. “I don’t think you understand,” she said. She hesitated, watching for Wynonna’s reaction before continuing: “I like her. In more than a ‘friend’ way.”

Wynonna leaned back on her pillows. “Well, I would be lying if I said I was surprised,” she said. She may be stewing in her own head most of the time, but she wasn’t that much of an idiot. She had a growing inkling that Waverly’s feelings towards Nicole were more than platonic, and seeing the way Waverly had reacted to Nicole’s life being in danger just confirmed it. “I knew that you care about her. More than you care about most people. And you’ve always liked spending time with her ever since she wound up here.”

“Was I that obvious?” Waverly blushed. “What do you think? Am I being ridiculous?”

“For liking Nicole? Absolutely not,” Wynonna said. “She’s a big step up from Champ.”

At this, Waverly managed a chuckle. “Oh god, she really is,” she said. “Wynonna, I feel so silly, though. There I was getting all cut up about her getting shot, and you know, going to the hospital every day, wanting to be the first person she saw when she woke up… I was pretty much putting my heart out there for her! What if she doesn’t even see me that way?”

“I think she feels the same way about you, Waves,” Wynonna said. She was being honest, too. Nicole didn’t let on much with how she felt, but her actions did all the talking for her. She was a kind and reliable person, but even more so when Waverly was involved. Wynonna didn’t mention this out loud, for fear that she would trigger one of Waverly’s overanalysis-induced meltdowns. Instead, she said: “You should tell her how you feel. I don’t think you’ve got anything to lose.” In fact, it would probably all work out in Waverly’s favour.

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then Nicole Haught is an idiot.”

* * *

It surprised Wynonna how strong Nicole looked already on the morning they discharged her from the hospital. She only agreed to be taken to the truck by wheelchair because Waverly insisted. There was a noticeable shift in the energy between Nicole and Waverly, but Wynonna knew better than to ask questions. Besides, after her conversations with Dolls and with Gus, she was avoiding talking to Nicole. She felt like she had to apologise for getting her into so much shit and for essentially getting her fired. She didn’t quite know how to approach that just yet.

They settled into their new routine at the homestead, which revolved around Nicole’s recovery. Wynonna made sure that Nicole was comfortable, without actually having to hold a conversation with her. She refilled the jug of water on the side table by the pullout couch, or she did the laundry so Nicole would always have clean clothes.

The task of entertaining Nicole was left up to Waverly and Gus, including taking her out of the homestead to continue her treatment. This also involved managing—but mostly glossing over—the grumpy moods she worked herself into. She wasn’t used to being caged in for days on end. She could stand and walk, but with a noticeable limp, and not for long periods. She refused to be treated like an invalid and insisted on sitting with them to eat. She talked as pleasantly as possible, but there were times when Wynonna could hear the edge in her voice.

One morning, while Nicole was in the bathroom, Wynonna picked up Nicole’s boots—recently brushed cleaned and polished by Gus—and placed them near the pullout couch. She also got the barn coat that Nicole was fond of borrowing and laid it out at the foot of the couch. On it, she placed the keys to the ATV. Gus was in town and she knew that Waverly had gone out on foot to work on the pigs. It was supposed to snow heavily the next day, so Wynonna figured this was the opportunity for Nicole to enjoy some time on the ATV before it was unusable.

Wynonna laced her own boots up, grabbed the keys to her truck, and headed out before Nicole could find her.

* * *

She returned that afternoon, spotting the ATV parked just by the porch stairs. She was expecting a slightly more cheerful Nicole.

She took her time unlocking the door and shedding her boots and coats. She turned into the living room to find the pullout couch empty. There were voices coming from the dining area.

Nicole was  _ cheerful _ , all right. But that had probably less to do with her ATV adventure and more to do with Waverly perched on her right knee, her hands cupping her face, giggling as she leaned in for a kiss. 

Wynonna’s eyes widened. So  _ that  _ was happening. She cleared her throat.

The noise caused both their heads to whip towards her direction. With a squeak, Waverly hopped off Nicole’s knee. Nicole’s face had turned nearly the same shade as her hair.

“Wynonna -” Nicole started.

“Uh, just announcing my presence,” Wynonna explained awkwardly, avoiding eye contact with either of them. “So, you know, you won’t think I’m a voyeur or something. Carry on.” She coughed. “Or don’t carry on. Suit yourself!” Feeling a blush coming on herself, she turned around and practically sprinted up the stairs, only taking a breath once she was in the privacy of her room.

Wynonna wasn’t going to lie. She was a little bit proud of Waverly.

* * *

Doc Holliday turned up in Purgatory on Wynonna’s twenty-seventh birthday, and they had been friends since. Doc was flighty and pointlessly evasive most of the time, but he was reliable when it counted, not to mention good in bed. That made him a decent friend in Wynonna’s books.

She had taken to spending more time with Doc lately, while Nicole was recovering. It seemed right that Doc would be her confidant.

“Waverly and Nicole, huh?” Doc asked. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

“Waverly is more unpredictable than you think,” Wynonna said. “Anyway, I’m okay with it, but Nicole and I haven’t exactly been talking lately.”

“Why’s that?” Doc asked.

Wynonna pinched the bridge of her nose. “I was stupid and dragged her into my own mess, and I’m kinda worried she’s just putting up with me because she likes my sister,” she said. “If I came near her again, she might decide that Waverly and her family are just too much trouble.” It wasn’t enough that she had put Nicole in danger, but with the new development in Nicole’s relationship with Waverly, Wynonna thought it was better to keep her distance. She had stolen enough from Waverly already. She couldn’t take yet another chance at happiness for her. If Nicole was smart, she’d be enticing Waverly away from Purgatory.

“You’re making an awful lot of assumptions about someone you haven’t spoken to properly in days,” Doc said.

Wynonna knew he was right, but she huffed in protest. “I’m most likely right,” she insisted.

“Wynonna,” Doc chuckled, “that might just be the most untrue thing you’ve said to me.”

* * *

The laundry shed had been Wynonna’s unexpected refuge on her ongoing mission to avoid Nicole. It was a safe place, even if it was sometimes Nicole’s laundry that she had been doing.

Wynonna was soaking her farm-dirtied clothes in the sink when the laundry shed’s door slid open.

“Wynonna.” It was Nicole.

“Oh, hey, Nicole.” Wynonna cleared her throat loudly. “Are you sure you should be out here?”

“Surely I’m allowed to walk around,” Nicole said, frowning. “Besides, I feel like you and I haven’t talked in ages. I mean, we’ve seen each other quite a bit, but we haven’t had a conversation since I got back from the hospital.”

“Nicole -” Wynonna began.

“Is it because of Waverly?” Nicole asked.

“What?”

“Are you avoiding me because Waverly told you about me and her?” Nicole asked.

Wynonna was secretly relieved that Nicole hadn’t seemed to realise that she had been avoiding her even before there was a “Waverly and Nicole”. She avoided looking at Nicole by swishing her clothes around in the sink. “Waverly hasn’t said anything, and we haven’t even talked about that time I walked in on you guys,” she told Nicole.

“Then why are you avoiding me?” Nicole demanded. “It’s confusing, to be honest. I thought you’d confront me right away, to tell me to lay off your sister, or to threaten me with the shovel talk.”

“The shovel talk?” Wynonna wanted to laugh.

Nicole folded her arms across her chest. “Everyone knows you’re like, fiercely overprotective of Waverly,” she said. “I know I’m not Champ Hardy, but I did lie to you guys a lot, so I thought you’d be jumping in to tell me about the many ways you could make me disappear if I ever hurt Waverly.”

“Wow, that’s an elaborate fantasy, Haught,” Wynonna said. “But I know you well enough to be sure that you won’t ever hurt Waverly on purpose. And you’re so damn good, you’d try not to hurt her unintentionally either. I’m not worried about that, then.”

“Then why do I get the feeling that I’ve lost a friend?”

“Because it’s not about Waverly at all!”

Nicole paused, blinking for a few seconds. “What do you mean?”

Wynonna took a deep breath. “Look, I’m trouble. I’m a piece of work. I  _ shot  _ you before I even saw your face, I broke you out of the sheriff’s station when I wasn’t supposed to, and then I roped you into some sort of wild goose chase straight into the guys you were supposed to be running away from. I got you fired from your job!” she said. “I haven’t been talking to you because I feel guilty that you keep getting hurt because of me. I thought that if I’d stopped talking to you, I’d drive you away and then you wouldn’t have to be around my shit anymore.”

“Well, it hasn’t worked, has it?”

“I underestimated your relationship with Waverly,” Wynonna said. “I knew you two had a thing, but I didn’t know if you’d actually stay for her.”

Nicole tilted her head to the side. There was a small smile on her face, and Wynonna understood how her sister could be attracted to this woman. “I don’t think anyone could make me leave Waverly,” she admitted.

Wynonna hesitated before asking the next question. “Could you get Waverly to leave with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could you get her out of Purgatory? She’s too good for this place, you and I both know that,” Wynonna said. “Get her somewhere people can’t judge her by her last name, or by her sister. Get her somewhere she’s actually got a future beyond fattening up pigs.”

Nicole cringed, presumably at the harsh, offhanded way Wynonna had described homestead life. “Wynonna, I couldn’t do that,” she said. “I don’t think anyone could ever make Waverly leave  _ you _ . Not even me.” She leaned against the benchtop, taking her weight off of her left leg. “I care about Waverly a lot. And I care about you, too. I know how important you two are to each other. I know better than to separate the Earp girls, and,” a smirk tugged on the corner of her mouth, “I now know better than to get dragged into one of your plans again.”

At this, Wynonna couldn’t resist a brief, sharp laugh.

“I don’t blame you for anything. Everything you came up with, I was there with you, a hundred percent. Even when I got into trouble, you came back for me,” Nicole told her. “I can trust you, Wynonna. You don’t have to keep beating yourself up about this. I like being your friend. I like being here. I don’t want my damn job anyway. I’m done with that life.”

There was a lump in Wynonna’s throat. She fought it, trying to keep her composure, because Nicole sure as hell was keeping hers. She thrust her hand in the sink again, swishing her clothes in the now-murky water. “So what do you plan to do after you get better?” she asked.

Nicole’s eyes fell to the floor. “I was hoping to stay here, work on the homestead with you.” She paused. “If that’s okay with you, that is.”

Wynonna had to admit it—her heart swelled. The thought of her, Waverly, and Nicole. A pig-farming, jam-making, free range egg team. Gus could cut back on her shifts at Shorty’s and make jam and bake pies on the homestead. Hell, she could even move to Chilliwack if she wanted to; certainly the girls could manage now. They could open up a stall at the market. They could sell more prized hogs to Banff. Once she started imagining this future, she couldn’t stop. “It’d be awesome if you could stay, Nicole,” she said. “But you gotta ask Waverly, too.” She doubted that Waverly would say no.

“Of course,” Nicole said.

“Maybe you can learn how to butcher,” Wynonna jokingly suggested. She had heard about Nicole’s attempt with Roger.

Nicole shook her head adamantly. “I was thinking we should grow grapes for wine,” she said.

Wynonna laughed. “I was expecting you would say that.” She laughed again, recalling something from a few weeks ago. “Hey, you know Waverly thought we were sleeping together?”

Nicole's eyes widened. “What? How?”

“When we had our late night planning meetings. She thought I was keeping you around as a fuck buddy,” Wynonna explained, unable to keep a straight face.

“Jeez.” Nicole wrinkled her nose. “Sorry, Earp, you're not my type.”

“What? Haughtstuff, you know you're a tall drink of water, but I am  _ way  _ out of your league.”

* * *

For the first time in years, Christmas on the homestead was going to be a fairly lively affair. Instead of the quiet Christmas lunches they had since Wynonna returned from Europe, they were preparing a full on feast, vegan options included. They invited Doc, Dolls, Jeremy, and even Eliza, who couldn’t come, on account of her being summoned to Ottawa. Interestingly, Wynonna noticed that Nicole looked relieved about this.

The morning of Christmas Eve, Wynonna, accompanied by Waverly and Nicole, shopped for a tree, and they took it home and decorated it. Wynonna walked Nicole through slaughtering two roosters while Waverly and Gus went into Purgatory for groceries.

They woke up on Christmas morning to pancakes and hot chocolate, prepared by Gus. They needed to load up before getting stuck into the preparations for the people coming over. They decided to exchange presents over breakfast. It had become a predictable affair. Gus would usually get clothes, Waverly would usually get books or some knitting, and Wynonna would get vinyl records or better yet, alcohol. 

Nicole was the refresher that their holidays needed. Gus had gotten her a Christmas sweater that matched Wynonna’s and Waverly’s, along with a tin of fancy boot polish. Wynonna gave her a hip flask and a promise to convert her into a whiskey drinker. Waverly’s present was simple but spoke volumes about their intimacy: two neck gaiters, one in a patterned red colour, and the other in a plain khaki. Nicole had unwrapped the red one and handed it to Waverly to slip over her head and arrange around her neck. In full daylight, it would have clashed with her hair, but in the muted lighting of their living room, and in the romance of the moment, it looked perfect.

Nicole had presents for them, too. She gave Gus a new seat warmer for her car, to get her through the rest of the winter driving back and forth from Purgatory. For Wynonna, she got a set of two handblown whiskey glasses. And for Waverly, a starter beekeeping kit, with a guidebook to go along with it.

“You remembered!” Waverly squealed.

“I bought it months in advance,” Nicole sheepishly admitted. At this, Wynonna remembered when Nicole had asked her to stop by the hardware store on the way back from the abattoir.

They cleaned up after breakfast, put their presents away, and then started preparing for Christmas lunch. The three men arrived. Doc was his usual charming self, and Jeremy was a livewire, bouncing all over the place, both physically and topic-wise. And there was Dolls, who was taciturn at first, but eventually looked comfortable and even a little bit touched that he had been invited somewhere for Christmas.

Lunch started late and continued on into dinner. They took their leave just after eight o’clock at night, full of Gus’s vegan pudding and Waverly’s French press coffee.

The inhabitants of the homestead retired for the night at around ten o’clock. Wynonna caught Waverly and Nicole slipping into Waverly’s bedroom, hoping to go unnoticed. In the spirit of Christmas, Wynonna decided not to say a word.

* * *

Nicole moved back into the cabin after New Year’s. Wynonna, Gus and Waverly had protested, until Nicole argued that she was feeling much better, and it was ridiculous of her to be sleeping on a pullout couch when there was a perfectly good bed available in the cabin. Wynonna tried to crack a joke about how Nicole could just share a room with Waverly, but it turned out that Nicole was all sorts of chivalrous and boring, so that was out of the question. And so, to the cabin she went.

Exactly three days later, there was a snowstorm. 

As it began, Wynonna ran into the cabin and hauled Nicole’s pack out to the house herself. Nicole was in the kitchen helping Waverly prepare lunch. She frowned at the sight of Wynonna with her pack.

“We’re gonna be snowed in for a couple of days,” Wynonna said. “I thought you should have your stuff with you.” Any other person would be a bit concerned that Nicole was still living out of her pack, but Wynonna understood Nicole’s mindset, and plus, it was practical. “I’ll bring it to Waverly’s room. You can stay there,” she added helpfully.

Waverly rolled her eyes. “Like she needs  _ your  _ permission.”

“I’m just saying,” Wynonna retorted. She hoisted the pack onto her back and took it upstairs.

* * *

The snowstorm lasted just under thirty-six hours. When Wynonna woke up, she peered out of her window and saw that homestead was covered in fresh powder. She got out of bed and padded across the hall to Waverly’s room. She knocked softly before opening the door and peering inside. Waverly and Nicole were thankfully dressed. Wynonna let herself in, creeping towards Waverly’s side of the bed.

Wynonna prodded her sister in the shoulder. “Waves,” she whispered.

Waverly opened her eyes slowly, then alarmed, turned her head and shoulders to check if Nicole was still beside her. She turned back to Wynonna. “Is everything okay?”

“Get dressed,” Wynonna told her. “We need to check on the animals.”

The chicken coop had been moved into the small barn for the winter, and that barn and the pig pens were all fitted with heat lamps on timers. They had checked that they were working properly once they had been warned about the storm. Still, there were water troughs and feed boxes to be refilled, and eggs to be harvested.

Ten minutes later, the sisters were both downstairs, shrugging coats on and lacing their boots. Wynonna adjusted her hat while Waverly tugged on her gloves. They stepped outside. It was shaping up to be a cloudless day, with the winter sun rising weakly over the horizon, and the piles of snow in front of them reached their thighs. But at least the wind had calmed down. Wordlessly, the trudged through the snow to grab the shovels resting against the outside of the laundry shed. They didn’t bother with the ATV, opting instead to shovel a trail to the barns. It took them the better part of an hour.

Wynonna used the front of her fleece sweater to wipe the sweat off her forehead. “You should really ask Nicole if we can use some of her winemaker money to get a snowmobile,” she teased.

“Wynonna!” Waverly exclaimed, affronted.

“I’m just kidding, jeez,” Wynonna said. She opened the doors to the pig pens. She placed her shovel by the door and Waverly followed suit. Some of the younger pigs were excited to see them, squeaking as they crashed around the sisters’ legs.

“Hey, guys,” Waverly greeted them. “You haven’t been too cold in here, have you?” She was certain that they weren’t. The heat lamps turned on and off throughout the day, always ensuring that the temperature never dipped below ten degrees. The pigs were clever enough to huddle together when they felt too chilly. The heat lamps were there to make them comfortable, and to ensure that their food and water didn’t freeze when the humans were snowed in.

Wynonna refilled the water troughs, taking care to run the tap for a minute or so before even attempting to squeeze the trigger on the hose, knowing that it had a tendency to freeze. She retrieved bags of feed from the lockable back room where it was kept, and filled the food boxes. When that was done, she joined Waverly in checking each of the pigs, looking at any issues that might have occurred.

“Everything looks good,” Waverly said. “Shall we head to the chickens?”

In the barn, Wynonna stood around while Waverly harvested eggs. The chickens had always liked her better.

Waverly’s upper body was inside a coop when she piped up: “You know who probably has money to get everyone a snowmobile for their farms?”

“Who?” Wynonna asked.

Waverly emerged from the coop, holding a small plastic bucket half-filled with eggs. “Mercedes Gardner,” she replied.

Wynonna was a little worried that Waverly would say that.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, at the end. Possibly the softest epilogue you could imagine for our homesteaders. I legit cried while writing the last scene and I hope it brings a tear to your eye too.

“Tell me something that would surprise me,” Nicole whispered.

They were lying on their sides, facing each other on Waverly’s bed. It was a cold night for the middle of spring, and it was best spent under Waverly’s five blankets, though Nicole just opted for two of them. They were sleepy, but made concerted efforts not to fall asleep, wanting to spend more time talking to each other.

Waverly considered it for a moment. “I’ve never seen the ocean,” she whispered back.

“I’ll take you there.” The way Nicole didn’t hesitate as she said that made Waverly’s stomach flutter. Never in her life had she had someone who was so prepared to give her everything, without her having to ask for it explicitly.

Hushed conversations in the dead of night were underrated. Particularly when they didn’t involve talks of organised crime and dodgy evangelical churches.

“What about you?” Waverly asked. “Surprise me.”

“I actually didn’t hate the idea of running a vineyard,” Nicole said. “I just didn’t want to run my parents’ vineyard.”

“I get that.” Waverly knew what it was like, trying to break away from a name. “You wanted to do your own thing.”

Nicole rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. “Part of it is that.” Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “But I think running  _ their  _ vineyard came with a certain expectation for the kind of life they wanted me to live, to present to other people… I mean, letting them decide my career was one thing, but the rest of my life?”

“They weren’t okay with you being gay?”

“Oh, no, they were.” Nicole turned her head so that she was looking at Waverly. “They actually wanted to marry me off to someone, as soon as I finished university. The  _ perfect  _ wife… She went to a different school. A boarding school. Her parents owned a software company in Vancouver. She was nice enough, actually.”

“But?”

“I wasn’t into her that way,” Nicole said. “To be honest, no one’s quite grabbed my attention the way you have.”

Somehow, to Waverly, that was the real surprise.

* * *

Waverly read widely, and knew how to write and write well, but she had no idea about business. And Nicole, as great as she was, was a university dropout and family rebel who tuned out most of her parents’ lectures on running the business. Wynonna? Forget about it. If they were going to save Purgatory without lurking in legally dubious areas, they needed an expert.

That expert was Mercedes Gardner. 

She had an MBA from Queen’s University, and happened to be the primary heir of her family’s property development company. They owned and maintained most of the buildings in Purgatory, but most of their income was generated from their properties across the rest of Alberta. She also happened to be the only Gardner who inherited her parents’ compassion and generosity, accompanied by a boisterous personality. She had the money and the attitude. She was perfect.

They met at the Gardner estate, which was about the same size as the Earp homestead, except that it housed a sprawling country mansion, rather than the modest two-storey where the Earps lived. Mercedes sat them down in one of their many sitting rooms and returned with a bottle of wine, and glasses for each of them. She handed Wynonna the bottle of wine to open.

Wynonna regarded the bottle with suspicion. “This has a screw cap,” she said.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Mercedes said. “It’s from this winemaker in Vancouver Island. They’re doing some avant-garde, New World stuff. Screw caps are  _ in _ .”

Waverly felt Nicole grip her hand as Wynonna read out the label on the bottle: “Uncharted Wines.”

Mercedes looked at Nicole, with an almost wicked smile on her face. “First rule of a business collaboration is to do thorough research on your potential collaborators,” she said, winking. “Interesting that the daughter of the trendiest winemakers on the west coast is  _ here _ , dressed like some pig farmer.” She cast a disapproving eye over Nicole’s outfit, which was casual, but still noticeably more dressed up than her usual work clothes.

“I am a pig farmer,” Nicole retorted.

“Dude,  _ Uncharted _ ?” Wynonna asked Nicole. “Your parents might as well be running a craft beer joint.”

“They rebranded,” Nicole told her. “It was called Haught Family Winery.”

Wynonna scrunched up her nose. “See, even that sounds better,” she said.

“Just pour the damn wine,” Nicole snapped.

Wine was poured and they got to talking. To secure a future for Purgatory that didn’t involve money laundering, they needed to diversify their industries. Though Purgatory had been a mining town from its inception, reopening the mine was no longer a possibility. Some farms around Purgatory were small-scale operations, but most were family land that wasn’t being used effectively. Waverly did most of the talking, convincing Mercedes of investing in getting people proper agricultural training, and in capital to get them started on working on their farms. More stuff needed to be produced  _ in  _ Purgatory, instead of getting truckloads in from other towns, at premium prices. She told Mercedes that she knew it was going to be hard, messy labour, but it would be in the spirit of the old pioneering days. If the whole town was working towards a common goal, then perhaps everyone would be a little more willing to get their hands dirty.

“Wait, so is all the money coming from me?” Mercedes asked. “It’s not that I mind, it’s just that from the perspective of looking at the channels of finances, this doesn’t sound much different from what Bobo Del Rey was doing.”

“You’re right,” Waverly agreed. “We’re planning to approach a few more businesspeople.”

“Like who?”

Waverly mentally ticked the names off her list: “Herbert Hardy, Shorty, Rosita Bustillos, and the Perleys.”

“Rosita and the Perleys?” Mercedes asked.

“They own the pharmacy together,” Wynonna explained.

Mercedes stroked her chin. “That somehow makes sense,” she said. “Anyway, continue.”

“We’re not going to talk to them until we know that you’re on board with our plan. I mean, they’re kind of our friends, but them being our friends means they also know that we know jack about business, and that we don’t have money,” Waverly said. “You’re our trump card.”

“Please don’t say that name in my presence,” Mercedes said, causing Nicole to snort.

“Whatever! You’re like, really important to our plan,” Waverly said.

“Well.” Mercedes leaned back in her seat and slowly crossed her legs. “I also know that you don’t know anything about business, and that you don’t have any money.” She addressed Nicole, “Except you, you’ve got a trust fund.” She talked to Waverly and Wynonna again: “So tell me why I should work with you.”

Waverly, suddenly struck by the fact that Mercedes Gardner knew  _ exactly  _ what she was doing, couldn’t think of an answer. She turned to Wynonna, and then to Nicole, hoping that they would have something to say.

“Because we’re Earps,” Wynonna said simply. “Out of all the families in this town, we’re the ones that kept falling and getting back up. I came back here, not far from being a snot-nosed kid, and learned how to run a pig farm. And Waverly’s the smartest person in the Ghost River Triangle.” She jabbed a finger towards Nicole. “And  _ she  _ knows a hell of a lot about trees and shit.” Wynonna smirked at Mercedes. “C’mon, we’ve known each other for a long time now. You know I don’t back down from a fight.”

Mercedes smiled back at her. “Yes, I think I know that all too well,” she said.

And that was when they knew that Mercedes was going to be on their team.

* * *

If someone had told teenage Waverly that at the age of twenty-two, she would be running a homestead with her sister and her  _ girlfriend _ , she would laugh and go back to cheering for Champ as he brawled with someone on the ice. But here she was, a vegetarian pig farmer with a history degree, helping save the town that had given her and her family so much shit just for existing.

Really, the bigger miracle was that Wynonna returned and was staying put.

And the  _ biggest _ miracle was that Wynonna and Nicole hadn’t killed each other yet.

Waverly was worried that Wynonna would have asked Nicole to move out, upon discovering their new relationship, but Wynonna had been unexpectedly relaxed about it. She knew that Wynonna and Mercedes Gardner had been friends in high school, but Nicole was the first friend that Waverly had witnessed Wynonna having as an adult. Nicole may be Waverly’s girlfriend, but Waverly wasn’t going to discount the significance of the bond between her and her sister. They were so different, and that was what Waverly loved about them, and that was also what made them work well together. 

Waverly was checking on a pregnant sow when she heard them, bickering as they moved the chicken coops to a sunnier place.

Spring had made its soft arrival on Purgatory. What they had planted in the early winter was beginning to bloom, but after months of snow, the patches of bare land resembled a swamp, to the delight of the pigs. They had their happiest pasture in the spring, though it meant that the humans got twice as filthy compared to the rest of the year.

“Goddamn you, Haught!” Waverly heard Wynonna yell. Wynonna stomped over to where Waverly was, wiping her face with the bandana around her neck. “Your girlfriend is so fucking difficult sometimes, I swear.”

Wynonna and Nicole were the best of friends at this point, with their own rhythm and quirks, so Waverly had resolved to not intervene in their arguments when possible. And they argued a  _ lot _ . She just smiled at Wynonna. “Go get a drink of water, I’ll help Nicole move the coop.”

Wynonna obliged and started heading towards the house. “Nicole, that fucking know-it-all,” she muttered as she walked off, though she already seemed much less agitated.

Chuckling, Waverly walked over to Nicole, who was staring at the coop, as if she could move it using telekinesis. “Hey,” she said softly.

Nicole looked up, her expression softening at the sight of Waverly. “Hey,” she said back. Her arms reached out to loop around Waverly’s waist, pulling her close.

“I smell like pigs,” Waverly said, though she knew it didn’t matter; when they were out here, they all smelled like pigs. Nicole was solid against her, her heart thrumming from activity. Waverly’s cheek brushed against Nicole’s neck gaiter, one of the ones she gave her for Christmas.

Nicole didn’t respond. Instead, she leaned in and kissed Waverly on the forehead.

Waverly loosened the chin strap on Nicole’s hat and pushed it back from her head, taking its wide brim out of the way so that Waverly could kiss her on the lips. She could feel Nicole smile against her mouth, her arms relaxing against Waverly’s back as she returned the kiss. They went on like that, slowly and cheerfully under the clouds and breeze, until someone from behind Waverly cleared their throat.

“Seriously, guys?” It was Wynonna. “I thought you were gonna move the coop!”

* * *

The work with Mercedes was more successful than Waverly expected. She had a great head for business, and she was more generous than they thought. Upon learning that they had to make the trip to the library every couple of days to use the internet, Mercedes informed them that she had a contact that could rig a wireless internet connection on the homestead. It wouldn’t be high-speed fibre, but it should be sufficient for them to not have to sit in the library the whole day. Mercedes also told them that it would come in handy in the future, should they decide to set up online orders for their prized hogs and their jams. Work got done much faster after that.

They had gotten Herbert Hardy on board, along with Shorty, and eventually, after much persuading, Rosita and the Perleys. It wasn’t that the three women didn’t want to play nice; they just valued their privacy a lot more. Nevertheless, together, they came up with a plan for Purgatory. They wrote a proposal to Purgatory High School about apprenticeship and training programmes. They strategised on how to best use the ample farmland. Cattle was out of the question. Nobody in Purgatory owned that much land individually, and they were competing in a highly saturated market. Even the butcher Hardy commented that “Beef was passé.” They figured out that a few farms could focus on pigs and chickens, much like Earp homestead.

Waverly and Nicole talked to them about their forays into beekeeping and growing grapes.

“Corn and rye,” Wynonna suddenly said.

“Gesundheit,” Nicole joked.

“Alberta’s second largest agricultural produce is wheat,” Wynonna said. To the looks of surprise around the table, she shrugged and added: “I know how to use Google, guys.” They prompted for her to continue. “While Haught here is gonna try to make wine, some of our farms can try to make whiskey!”

Waverly buried her face in her hands. “I knew it was gonna come to this.”

Wynonna tried to rally support around the table. “Come on! Purgatory’s own brand of whiskey? Wouldn’t that stuff be amazing? It could put us on the map!” She grinned wider when she saw Mercedes, Shorty, and Rosita looking interested, even  _ enthusiastic _ , about her idea.

“I know somewhere we can get equipment,” Shorty said.

“I have a contact for barrels,” Nicole added.

“Well, it's not like grains are hard to get around here,” Herbert Hardy conceded.

Rosita shrugged. “I’m a fucking chemist,” she said.

“Well, I’ve got money to burn,” Mercedes said.

Wynonna cackled, and turned to Waverly. “Well, baby girl, I guess we’re making whiskey!”

* * *

Waverly woke up. She was in the cabin. She felt around for her phone to check the time. It was four in the morning. She turned the screen off and sighed. That was one of the many downsides of living on a farm. If she wanted to get the most work done, she had to be ahead of the sun. Sleep-ins were a rare luxury.

She rolled over carefully, because the bed was narrow and she didn’t want to wake Nicole. Nicole was sleeping soundly on her side, facing the wall. Waverly scooted closer to her and wrapped an arm around her waist and rested her forehead against Nicole’s shoulder. She could get another hour of sleep. 

Beneath her forearm, she could the firm muscles of Nicole’s abdomen, contrasted with how the softness of her breasts just tickled the hairs on Waverly’s arm. Waverly felt herself becoming more alert. Heat stirred in the pit of her stomach. She explored downwards, her hand finding its way underneath Nicole’s soft grey t-shirt. She splayed her fingers against Nicole’s abs, pressing gently, hoping that it would rouse Nicole.

Nicole stirred a little bit, mumbling softly, before settling back to sleep.

Waverly slid her hand upwards, tracing the underside of Nicole’s breasts with her fingers. She could hear her own breathing get heavier, and she didn’t quite know whether to be embarrassed. She cupped one of Nicole’s breasts. Seconds later, she felt the nipple stiffen against her palm.

At this, Nicole stirred again. She rolled onto her back and slowly opened her eyes. She noticed the hand under her t-shirt and gave Waverly a bleary, questioning look.

“Is this okay?” Waverly whispered.

Nicole didn’t say anything. Instead, she pulled Waverly so that she was half on top of her, Waverly’s hand still on her breast. She kicked the covers off with her legs. Her shirt had ridden up, exposing her stomach. Her hand threaded through Waverly’s hair as she brought Waverly’s lips down to meet hers. She didn’t waste time with chaste kisses, her tongue already running across Waverly’s teeth and sliding against Waverly’s own tongue.

Waverly couldn’t help but moan into Nicole’s mouth. Physically, everything about Nicole was addictive. The more they had sex, the hungrier Waverly got. She wanted to do  _ everything _ , and she wanted to do it as many times as they could. She knew she eventually got exhausted, but she couldn’t imagine herself being satisfied. Through the fabric of her tank top, she could feel the heat of Nicole’s body. Nicole’s other hand skated up her ribs over her top, and Waverly wanted more, more,  _ more _ …

Nicole seemed to get the message, and briefly paused their kiss so that she could pull Waverly’s top over her head. She let Waverly take her t-shirt off, too. Both ended up on the floor. Nicole’s back arched and her head tilted back as Waverly went straight for her neck. She hummed appreciatively as Waverly pressed open-mouthed kisses down her collarbone and chest.

“Fuck,” she hissed, when Waverly’s tongue swirled around a nipple.

Waverly sucked at Nicole’s breasts while her hand wandered further down. Having felt Nicole’s skin against hers, she was needy now, and not afraid to show it. She hooked her thumb around the waistband of Nicole’s boxers and pulled down, as quick as she could. Nicole lifted her hips a bit so Waverly could get them down her legs.

With Nicole fully naked beside her, practically writhing into her touch, Waverly couldn’t wait any longer.

“Waverly,” Nicole panted. “ _ Baby _ .”

Neither could Nicole, so it seemed.

Waverly slipped her fingers into Nicole. She moved slowly at first, though Nicole was more than ready for her. She just felt like teasing a little bit.

“Waverly.”

“Yes, baby?”

“Harder,” Nicole rasped out.

Bracing herself on her other arm, Waverly shifted her position slightly so that she could move deeper into Nicole, angling her hand so that her palm hit Nicole’s clit with every thrust, the way Waverly knew she went mad for. Underneath her, Nicole was quickly unravelling, her fingers digging into Waverly’s upper back, noises escaping more loudly and freely from her mouth—though not as loud, never as loud, as Waverly could be when their positions were swapped.

Nicole reached her peak minutes later, accompanied by a string of profanity Waverly knew she wouldn’t be caught saying outside of sex.

Waverly kept her fingers inside of Nicole, watching as Nicole caught her breath. Her hair was mussed over her pillow, and there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Waverly smiled, proud of herself because of the effect she had on this unbelievably gorgeous woman. She loved being able to render Nicole helpless. “Hey there,” she said gently, curling her fingers ever so slightly and chuckling as Nicole shuddered at the sensation.

“Waves, what on earth?” Nicole said, half-laughing, half-wheezing.

Waverly shrugged. “I can’t help it that you’re so sexy,” she said. “I just had to  _ take  _ you.” She curled her fingers again.

Nicole’s eyes rolled back in her head. “ _ God _ ,” she moaned. “Wait, what time is it?”

“It’s like, just after four,” Waverly said. “We’ve got time.”

“Good.” Nicole’s voice was low, and her breathing began to quicken once more. “Waverly?”

“Yeah?”

“Take me again.”

* * *

They needed to pick up some documents from Mercedes. Wynonna elected to remain on the homestead and sent Waverly and Nicole instead. As they drove onto the Gardners’ estate, they saw two big trucks. “What the heck,” Waverly muttered, craning her neck to try figure out what was happening.

“What’s all this?” Nicole asked, as they walked into the Gardners’ vast foyer. The place had been emptied of furniture, and Nicole’s voice bounced around the walls. Two burly men, each carrying an end of a luxurious daybed, walked past them, one of them grunting an “Excuse me”. Nicole’s gaze followed them out the door.

Mercedes emerged from one of the mansion’s many sitting rooms. Upon seeing the two women, she tucked a loose red strand of hair behind her ear. “Ladies!” She held up a finger, pausing their conversation to accost a second set of burly men about the way they were handling furniture. She then turned back to Waverly and Nicole. “I’ll get you those documents. I totally forgot the movers were coming early! Good thing I got them out of the desk in the study in time!”

“Wait,” Waverly said. “Are you leaving town?”

“Oh, no, Beth and Tucker are leaving town. Separately, not together,” Mercedes said.

“Where are they going?” Waverly asked. That was the thing with Mercedes. She wasn’t one for exposition. Information had to be wrung out of her, and she delighted in it.

“Beth has had enough of Purgatory and has decided that she would be moving to one of our properties in Calgary. And because I’ve had enough of Beth, I agreed with her,” Mercedes said. “She wanted to take Tucker, but that boy has been slacking off… I cut him off from his trust fund, gave him twenty thousand dollars, and sent him to manage our properties up north.”

“Up north?” Nicole asked.

“Yes.” Mercedes didn’t bat an eyelid. “In Fort McMurray.”

Waverly realised it was a punishment of sorts. Tucker was a spoiled brat who grew up under Beth’s wing, and Mercedes had been pretty hands off with him, since she wasn’t the type to have time for people like him, blood relations be damned. “How long do you expect to keep him up there?” she asked.

“Indefinitely.” Sensing her worry, Mercedes waved off her concerns. “I’m paying him, too. The normal salary for our entry-level property managers. And he’s not even paying any rent!” she told her. “Anyway, if he was a little more stupid, he’d have just gone west with the twenty thousand dollars to try his luck, but at least he knows that money is gonna dry up fast… and he isn’t getting any more from me unless he’s earning it.”

“Okay,” Nicole said. “Did you sell this place?”

“Oh, of course not!” Mercedes exclaimed. “I bought this charming little bungalow in Purgatory and I’m moving in there today. This place is just too big for me! I’m going to buy some new furnishings, and maybe convert it into an attraction of some sort. Any ideas, Waverly?”

Waverly shrugged. “I don’t know, a museum?” She secretly imagined herself being the curator of a small town museum. Someone who had the responsibility of preserving Purgatory’s history.

“I’ll put that on the list,” Mercedes said. She walked out to the porch, looking out at the open prairie. “Maybe I’ll get some stables, set up a horse riding school for the rich kids of Calgary. Parents are willing to drive out this far.” She turned back to Waverly and Nicole. “That would be a good boost to the town’s economy, don’t you think?”

In that case, the museum was probably a poor suggestion. Waverly sighed.

“I think it’s a viable idea,” Nicole said. “If you can find the right staff.”

“Oh, of course.” Mercedes put her hands on her hips and grinned at Waverly. “I underestimated you, you know. I thought you were just Wynonna’s goody-two-shoes little sister, without a daring bone in her body. But look at all this.” She gestured around her. “Look at what you’ve started. Look at what’s to come. This is because of you.”

“Nonsense -” Waverly began, but trailed off when Nicole wrapped a proud arm around her shoulders.

“Can you believe it?” Mercedes laughed. “I’m actually starting to like this town.”

Waverly felt the same.

* * *

Summer was fast approaching and things in Purgatory seemed more hopeful than ever. They were running workshops on keeping chickens, which was less of an economic boost and more a way to be more self-reliant. Purgatory was never going to be the bustling hub, or the industry giant. It will always be the small town on the highway to Banff. But the people of Purgatory could do better to look after themselves.

Waverly had spent the last few weeks talking to the parents and the faculty of Purgatory High School, helping them to implement a careers programme for the next academic year, with a focus on explicitly directing suitable students towards agricultural trades. The last thing Purgatory needed was a reason for another Bobo Del Rey to emerge.

Wynonna, on the other hand, tried her hand at butchering, under Herbert Hardy’s watch. She was a natural with a knife. Mercedes suggested on sending her elsewhere to study charcuterie, but Wynonna was adamant on sticking around. Everyone else needed to get back on their feet first, before they even attempted anything more ambitious. And Wynonna was determined to help make that happen.

Admittedly, Waverly didn’t expect that from her sister. Wynonna had always found it difficult to forgive, more so to forget, but there she was, making an effort. She still avoided the vast majority of Purgatory’s population—outside the confines of Shorty’s, anyway—and still went out of her way to rile up Sheriff Nedley, but Waverly could see how hard she worked behind the scenes. She wouldn’t have made a good spokesperson anyway; that was Waverly’s strength. All this time, her sister just wanted to be  _ good _ , and now that she got her chance, it turned out that she didn’t even want to be recognised for it. It was an uncharacteristic, yet pleasing, humility.

Nicole was doing a bit of travelling. She, along with Wynonna, had to spend a few days in Calgary to testify against Bobo and Pastor Clootie. Afterwards, Nicole made trips around Alberta and British Columbia, networking with people in the food industry. She was doing this on behalf of their homestead, trying to find clients that would be interested in their pork.

She had been away for the week, hopping around ski resorts around Banff, and Waverly had missed her sorely. She still hadn’t moved out of the cabin, which frustrated Waverly a little bit. They had been living and working together on the homestead for three-quarters of a year already, under extraordinary circumstances, and yet Nicole still won’t share her bedroom permanently. Sometimes she was just  _ too  _ honourable.

Nicole was using Waverly’s jeep to travel, and the last time she had heard from her, she was only an hour away. Waverly and Wynonna had finished on the homestead for the day, and Waverly, for once, had agreed to having drinks before dinner. Wynonna brought out wine.

“No whiskey?” Waverly asked.

“I’m trying to learn to like wine,” Wynonna said. “What if Haught’s fancy friends want to come over for dinner?”

“They’re probably hipsters. I’d doubt that they’d look down on your for drinking whiskey,” Waverly reassured her.

Wynonna snorted. “They better not.” She poured wine in one glass and handed it to Waverly, before filling it up herself. “I’m happy you’re still here, Waves,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I always thought you’d leave this place eventually. Leave me behind,” Wynonna said. “You could do a lot more things with your life, you could live somewhere a lot nicer than this place… You don’t even have to touch a pig or a chicken. But you still do.”

It wasn’t like the thought hadn’t occurred to Waverly. It was hard to grow up in Purgatory, even harder with the kind of family life she had. But it wasn’t like she had a clear, viable plan sketched out for herself once she graduated university. And it wasn’t like she wanted to leave Wynonna all alone. With Gus, no less. She didn’t want to leave  _ either  _ of them alone with each other. But that wasn’t the only reason.

“I don’t see myself doing anything else. For now, at least,” Waverly admitted. “Like, I’ve got a job to do here, and I need to do it first, you know? Before I can even think about moving on.”

“Fair enough. I guess I kinda feel the same way.” Wynonna took a sip of her wine, and then cringed. “Jesus.” She squeezed her eyes shut, and opened them again, looking mildly offended that the glass in her hand still had quite a bit of wine in it. “Why do people make a fuss out of these goddamn rotten grapes? I’m sticking to whiskey. Sorry.”

“I understand,” Waverly said, laughing. “Do you think we’ll be able to leave this?” She gestured at the land around them. The land neglected by their father. The land that they inherited, and painstakingly worked on. The land that was giving them life. A  _ living _ . It looked beautiful this way, cast in the glow of the setting sun.

Wynonna thought for a moment. “I think that we’ll always find ourselves coming back,” she said. “But I don’t think it matters what happens to this place, in the end. I think it’s about you and me, and wherever it is we decide to call home. That’ll always be our choice to make.” She placed her hand on Waverly’s knee. “You’re my heart, baby girl. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t.” Waverly looked into her sister’s eyes and smiled.

“Hey.” Wynonna had spotted something in the distance. “Look who’s back.”

Waverly’s red jeep was cruising down the road, and into the homestead. It came to a stop, and Nicole emerged from the driver’s seat, her hair shaggy and travel worn, and her eyes searching, until they landed on Waverly. Her face broke out into a smile.

Waverly put her wine glass down and practically flew off the porch.

Nicole met her halfway.

Waverly sighed as Nicole’s arms wrapped around her, inhaling the familiar scent of Nicole.

“Hi, baby,” Nicole said.

“Hey,” Waverly said back. She rested her head on Nicole’s chest. As she listened to Nicole’s heart beating, she knew that Wynonna was right.

Home was a decision.

**Author's Note:**

> Watching _Godless_ made me realise two things: 1) _Wynonna Earp_ is actually a decent tribute to the Western genre, and 2) I could write a modern-day _Godless_ that was also a Wayhaught AU. So I started this fic and got into it in such a big way! This fic is gonna have action and comedy and romance and the whole lot. I've never attempted anything of this scale before, so I'm excited to see what you think. I will try to update weekly, unless life gets in the way.
> 
> The title is from "Gun" by Chvrches.


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